Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Ruins


Sunlight scatters
details of
debris from
the wall


In the dew of morning
fragments gleam
like gemstones
for mad foragers

a cry rises

and men and women rush
to the well of voice

bury to the other end
and see the land bathed
in numberless
tears

The heart of
the Middle Kingdom
bleeds
stone

We are
sparing
with care.
But present
with cameras,
narration,
and dead air.








1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am surprised nobody has commented on this poem. But the poem itself implies such a fate--It is about the earthquake in China---nobody cares.......Reminds me of Rastignac in a Balzac novel being offered the ethical choice of allowing the death of a man in China if it ensured his success.....Why should he trouble about a man he does not or could never, in the normal flow of things, know?