Quake Warfare
When Earth waged war
against poor Port-au-Prince,
warm air,
once pervaded by Creole tunes of school children
and the smell of baked beans,
turned to chalky clouds
suffused with groans from beneath the rubble
and the stench of crushed corpses.
Newborn babies—some unscathed,
shielded by the shell of their cribs or the configuration of collapse,
others mangled, tiny skulls cracked, agile limbs severed—
barely manage a cry.
Orphaned toddlers roam streets
teeming with the homeless and lined by the lifeless.
Outside of town, massive pits welcome backhoes delivering
decaying bodies—nameless—to their final resting places.
Urban search and rescue crews
heroically extricate the almost dead,
but know they must inevitably yield to
the reality of life’s limits.
Others perform less glamorous tasks tending to the more living:
watering the thirsty, feeding the hungry,
sheltering the dispossessed,
healing the injured, treating the sick.
And now despair turns to rage
as looters ransack the little that still stands.
Brandishing the sharp-edged tools of destruction
that are the surgeon’s tools of resuscitation,
the strong subdue the weak,
proving once again
the maimed and meek
shall not inherit the Earth.
ScoopDaily has compiled a list of organizations accepting donations to support the Haiti relief efforts.
ClintonBush Haiti Fund – www.clintonbushhaitifund.org
American Red Cross – http://www.redcross.org
U.S. Fund for UNICEF – www.unicefusa.org
Doctors Without Borders – www.doctorswithoutborders.org
United Nations World Food Programme – www.wfp.org
Catholic Relief Services – www.crs.org
Salvation Army – www.salvationarmyusa.org
Popularity: 2% [?]
Would you like to join in the discussion?Comments
Have something to add?