Earthquake
Always it starts with a tiny sound,
No louder than the clink of ice in a glass—
The little Venus on the table
Tick-tocks as it walks in a wobble,
The frame beside it slowly slides,
The books begin to leave the shelves
As though pulled out by many readers,
And the vase, after a tap dance,
Leans on a side and topples over,
Its water like a hand of tears
Trying to retrieve the spilled roses,
And then the falling starts in earnest—
The miniature Venus de Milo
Drops to the floor to join its arms
In the unseen world of the broken,
The portraits kiss the floor and break,
Glasses and plates, all things untied,
Fall out and shatter on the tiles,
And those that are attached swing wildly,
The cuckoo comes out of its closet
To shout an anonymous hour,
As the whole house itself convulses
With the now fast unsettling ground.
Terror comes at a given morning
Which otherwise we might forget,
Expecting mornings to be the usual—
Sunny and with a hint of breeze,
Quiet but for the kindly tinkle
Of teaspoon in a coffee cup—
And yet it is that kind of morning
When suddenly disaster strikes
And it could be the end of time—
We rush out of the shaking house
And hold each other as the ground
Heaves and churns, threatening to open
And swallow up what is above it,
Our prayers get louder, they’re almost
Like shouts, we want them physically
To lift us from the angry ground,
A neighbor’s house smokes at the sides
Which twisting has turned into powder,
“Lord, save us!” we cry, “Mary help us!”
Before we know it, it is over,
That is the way with such as earthquakes,
That’s what they share with a fine day,
So passing it is, like a sunset,
And then it’s dark, we hope to hear
Again the voices of our children
And in our arms to gather them,
Enclose them with a wall of sobs.
In time we hear of other cries
Louder than ours, of other places
That were spun faster and bounced higher
By the unspeakable upheaval,
Perhaps the people there were like us,
Having just risen from their sleep,
Or else in church for early Mass,
We only hear of news about them
And, of course, see the photographs—
Roads with cracks so huge they went down
To the earth’s dark, mysterious heart,
The splintered bridges flapping limply
Like the strips of a burst balloon,
And over where once stood the homes
And the enormous ancient churches
The dust hung, staying behind like a parent
In the place where a child was lost.
What I find strange is that the statue
Of Mary the Mother of God
Was often all that had remained,
Intact but for a nick or two,
Among the heartbreaking debris.
But about faith and its mystery,
After my heart has trembled with the earth,
Nothing now comes as a surprise—
Is that not where you should stand, Mary,
Wherever there is devastation,
Just as you stood under the Cross?
