“Earthquake, hurricane/
The scurrying,/
Running in place on earth…”
Earthquake, hurricane
The scurrying,
Running in place on earth
Against mudtide and ashes,
Belched volcano fire, wind whip,
Horror torrent of flood pourings
Till the houses groan like defeated whales
Under the onslaught of wild elements
People flung, pummeled, buried, drowned or burned
In the homes they conceived
In dreams, defended and fortressed,
Flicked out of being in seconds:
All this only to be wept at, can’t be helped
But that people in confusion
Willfully as acts of self expression
Emblems of cursed misguided identity
Diminish revile and assassinate one another regularly
As civilizations disassemble lashing
While the eyes of individuals go hollow
As caves in the black damp center of the earth
Hard and bilious acrid and defensive
As trapped animals:
This need not occur
And there’s no other cause of it
Then the endless stupidity of our fathers,
Our own lack of vision and nerve
Locate the distance of self from self
And pry open mind’s encrusted habituation
The soft words release themselves in streams of warm demeanor
Stand firm in the wind of valor deterred
