It is too black tonight.
Airplanes overhead can see no life no
light in this sickly darkness.
Little illuminates the pits of hospitals
torn out of the earth
the ?lth of bloody bedding, unsanitized wounds,
bandages and medicines
soaking up the dirt and the chaos.
They are digging with earthen ?ngernails through wreckage.
The Earth has quaked Sumatra
and buried it’s inhabitants.
Frantic ones dig alone
without a tractor to break the eerie darkness
and crowding grief.
And it will come again,
the water and earth of Indonesia will return to their cruel sport,
and cause these lines to form
thousands, more thousands
awaiting survival of this night...
and masses huddle to read by the light of candles
lists of names.