Maddy, come home
The Revd Canon Tim Kinahan, rector of St John the Baptist, Helen's Bay, was a contributor to the BBC Radio Ulster Thought for the Day programme recently. His focus was the disappearance of little Madeleine McCann, who has been missing since 3rd May when she vanished from her parent's holiday apartment in Praia Da Luz in Portugal.
Tim summarized Madeline's disappearance with this poem which he read during his programme slot, and he has kindly given his permission for it to be published on this website:
‘Praia Da Luz.
A soft name, brochure clean,
Speaking of family times
And quiet, restful evenings by the pool.
Bright, white and pristine,
An artificial dream
Lapped by Atlantic breeze;
A haven from the stresses
Of the working world.
Haven no more,
As parents grieve and hearts destruct
And suspicion haunts the bars and beeches
That once spelled peace.
Holiday no more,
As nightmare smothers life
And tears at sanity itself.
We feel, by proxy, something of the pain;
We search the harrowed faces of her family
That plead for news through inexpressive eyes,
Trying hard to fathom the emptiness,
The dark abyss that has engulfed their souls.
There are no words
To convey feeling at this time,
For at this place meaning and madness
Melt into a freak-filled and frightful world
Where nothing moves save in a dreamlike trance
Of solitude and tears.
Feeling is numbed
By nothingness,
Anaesthetized
By a genocide of the soul.
More than a million Maddies vanish every year,
Torn from their parents' arms,
Traded, expendable, abused.
More than a million Maddies
Stare with fear into the shifty eyes
Of captors who know no peace
Looking for love amidst the distorted greed.
More than a million Maddies
Dream of return to the womb-like warmth of home,
To arms that understand
And eyes that glow.
Maddy, come home,
And bring in your wake
A singing throng
Released from servitude and from a living hell.
Maddy, come home.
All you million Maddies, home.'
Timothy Kinahan
18 May 2007