They were caught playing football

on the broken street

of Aleppo, one brief glimpse

of normality taken and destroyed,

imagine if it was here, where boys

in rags and girls in tattered

woollen stocking remains were seen

to smile as they played in the brown,

water filled crater where a mortar bomb

had exploded the night before

in the rain of fire; imagine

if that was on the streets of Bootle,

on the blown apart roads

leading to where a school bell once rang