TSUNAMI by Wendy Squire
 
We wanted death to be painless, discreet and invisible,
 
           To sneak silently like a careful thief in the night,
 
                   Stealing souls away in the depths of their dreams,
 
                             Unnoticed, unremarkable,
 
                                        A gentle transition
 
                                                   Like falling asleep.
   
We didn’t want it to be this unrelenting agony,
 
           This scrambling of battered bodies death,
 
                     Engulfed, powerless tide of humanity
 
                               Crushed, sucked in and out by a greater tide,
 
                                         Detected too late by those
 
                                                    Who could give no warning.
   
Wild upheaval of tectonic plates, grinding in the bowels of the earth,
 
           Teasing technology owned by developed nations,
 
                      This death, by natural displacement,
 
                                 Forced open the jaws of hell
 
                                           To swallow the unsuspecting
 
                                                      And innocent.
   
As the pollution of watery graves laid waste upon waste,
 
           There was nowhere to hide from the devastation
 
                      That made a mockery of war,
 
                                 A farce of our obsession with
 
                                            Ideological differences
 
                                                      And debate.
   
Our fickle illusion of immortality and greatness faded in the flash of death,
 
           Exposing our comparative comfort, luxury and greed,
 
                      The indecency of our excesses,
 
                                 Absurdity of treasures
 
                                            And prized collection
 
                                                      Of things.
   
A ruthless giant wave scraped bare the heartland’s paradisiacal fantasy,
 
           And shredded the complacency of our collective mind,
 
                      Provoking us to bear the unbearable,
 
                                To witness the frailty of our condition:
 
                                            Once valued, identifiable flesh
 
                                                      Now debris, cast aside.
   
And we gave generously of our resources, our millions, to relieve the suffering,
 
           To retrieve the semblance of normality, to make restoration
 
                      With shelter, medicine, clean water and food.
 
                                 We sent helicopters, soldiers and aid workers
 
                                            To those who beat back the starving
 
                                                      In their desperate grasp for supplies.
   
We grieved for the mother who held in her arms the lifeless body of her child;
 
           We grieved for the child whose mother was plucked away and drowned;
 
                      For the snatched babies, spreadeagled, floating face-down,
 
                                 Arms still suspended in futile supplication.
 
                                            The deluge receded, but sorrow did not,
 
                                                       For nothing restores such loss.
   
We wanted to cry out in dissension: Are the eyes of the gods offended?
 
           Does the stench of the dead reach up to a merciful heaven?
 
                      Then we saw the world subdued, united in mourning,
 
                                 Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs, Buddhists and Christians
 
                                            Assembled together to chant and to pray
 
                                                      For the essence of life, freed once more by death.
   
And we pledged to persevere, to continue in vigilance and compassion.
 
           Whether natural or man-made disasters will strip away our time
 
                      We know not, neither do we need to know;
 
                                 To honour each person’s unique contribution,
 
                                           And live unfashionably in loving kindness
 
                                                       Is all.