(SR) TSU-NA-MI
TO
the
250,000
VICTIMS
of the
TSU-NA-MI
of
BOXING DAY
2004
Remember the host of the ghostly battalion,
Imagine them drown’d in a growling sea,
Beach-huts for driftwood, corpses for carrion,
O! sing a sad song for the TSU-NA-MI.
Remember the sounds on the shores of Sri Lanka,
The crunching & breaking & snapping & screams,
As ships of pig-iron are ripped from the anchor,
& people-pack’d trains flung from bent, steely beams.
Remember the shock of the lush Phuket beaches
As in rushed a storm to destroy the fair bays
A street urchin wreck’d in Kamala beseeches
The first waves’ survivors, ‘the oceans still raise!’
Remember the minute that Heaven was swelling,
When nature roars awesome in raw, rampant state,
For two-hundred-thousand the death bell was knelling,
What Sayer or Vates foresee could foresee their fate?
Remember them fleeing those huge walls of water,
That snapp’d them & toss’d them & made bloody piles,
In aftermaths awful, she’ll search’d for her daughter,
A sad scene repeated some three thousand miles.
Remember the grief in the streets of Sumatra,
The next Krakatoa rolls in as a gale,
Whose waves leave a swathe for the here & hereafter
Of death & destruction on Golgothan scale.
Remember the mood in the days after Christmas,
When so many strangers shall shun the New Year;
A new, doleful sound if the river grows restless,
Have so many tears crystalliz’d a new fear?
Remember the trail of those waves of destruction,
From Asia to Africa surg’d the wild sea,
Remember, remember, the Lord of the Ocean,
O! sing a sad song for the TSU-NA-MI.
Mumble Words 