The News Told of the Terror

I wrote this poem in April 2009 in response to the earthquake in Italy. I was amazed by the coverage. CNN and the like made it out to be as if Mother Nature was the culprit and the malevelant one. It made me mad so I wrote this poem. Fast forward to anno 2020, with wild fires in California, Hurricanes in Florida and the retreating ice sheet of Greenland that will never be restored. We are killing our planet. We are parasites. We are all complicit, some, read Donald Trump, more than others, but we all are guilty. Just by our breathing.

The news told of the terror

in all its shaken aspect;

bodies collapsed by

collapsing buildings.

The horror shaken out in

the everyday lives of those-left.

Its shaking measured enough

to break the Lego of man’s ego.

Shaken as if laid upon by

Parkinson diseased hands,

until every stone was turned.

No war was fought here!

No unnatural deaths

occurred here, in this natural

disaster. No, nature takes its

course and cripples the cities

just as the cities cripple it.

Nature’s innocence shows

no remorse for being itself,

but rejoices in the quite of

a new day. All fury forgotten 

among the rubbled streets,

only broken lives and the

memory of being broken remain.

“How could this happen to us” ,

go the cries of the happened upon,

“Why has God forsaken us?”, atheist

and believer simultaneously say.

Where are the same cries and same

remorse for the dead , deadened

in man’s conflict against itself?

No, it is perfectly acceptable to

starve and enslave the poor;

enrich to protect the rich;

kill and be killed for the sake

of saying ,”I am right.”

It is not the earth’s fault that

man plants domesticity on the

fault line, or lines up concrete

shacks where no beast tread.

Why have we so humanised

the elements of nature that

we think them even scarcely

capable of the same measure

of cruelty as mankind?