Distant Sovereign Death

 My uncle embarked earlier this week on a multi-week sailing trip from Jamaica to Mexico. I was realizing how little I actually understood the geography of that part of the world, so I looked it up. That's when it occurred to me my uncle would be passing through the Caribbean Sea. 

As in, the same part of the world where the U.S. government is still regularly blowing up boats—burning alive all their passengers—without inspection or even a chance to surrender. (Four more such attacks occurred in just the last few days—bringing the total number of deaths above 180.)

I suddenly realized it was not an entirely absurd fear to worry that my uncle could find himself randomly in the crosshairs of my own country's military. 

But he's not carrying drugs, I think—and anyone could see that! All they'd have to do is stop the boat and search it, and they'd see there's nothing there!

But then again—that's precisely what they are not doing. At least not any longer. For years, when the U.S. Coast Guard actually had concerns that a vessel might be carrying drugs, they would call on the occupants to surrender and inspect its cargo. 

Now—under Trump—the U.S. military simply blows these boats up—without any questions, without first ordering the boat to halt and surrender. Indeed, in at least one case, U.S. forces have simply blown a vessel out of the water that was already clearly disabled—murdering all its crew and passengers. 

To quote one of my own poems from years ago: "When distant sovereign death can fly / You have no chance to ask it why." 

I want to think: no U.S. drone or military plane would randomly kill my uncle. He's done nothing wrong! If they knew anything about him, they wouldn't murder him!

But that must be what all the families of the Trinidadian and Venezuelan fishermen murdered in these boat strikes are saying too. The truth is, we have no idea who these people are that our government is flagrantly and shamelessly murdering—many of whose bodies have since washed ashore in Trinidad.

Who was the father or daughter or brother

Or uncle or sister or mother or son

Of the dead and abandoned body? —as Harold Pinter once asked in a poem (which he read aloud at his Nobel Lecture, in condemnation of civilian casualties in Iraq). 

Who were the uncles indeed of all those murdered Trinidadian fishermen? Were they uncles themselves? Did they have nephews? And did their nephews not likewise look out to sea—just as I am doing now—and think: surely it could not happen to our family! Surely that couldn't be real!