EveryDay Now, The News Comes to Kill Me With Eidetic Images
Jan 24th, 2010 | 6 responses
“I see so many twinned images each day;
one of life, one of death;
one of happiness, one of such sorrow.
So similar, so deadly different.
May there be good for those who are safe;
may there be good for those who are not.
May we who are disappointed idealists
Turn away from the specifics
of incessant accusations,
and instead turn toward simply clothing
with such love
whatever naked soul
stands right within our reach.”
cpe
__________
CODA
There will many months work ahead, the magnitude of such great upheaval cannot be grasped except story by story, and there will be hundreds of thousands of stories here behind the second image here, which is a worker in Haiti clearing a house of those who have died. Bodies become toxic, and when there are so many dead all at once, the gathering of bodies can become, for many, utilitarian, as they are racing a clock to clear and disinfect burgeoning bacteria that can infect the injured living through airborne and material contact with the long dead or the very ground or floor where the dead began to deteriorate. Large mass graves have been effected in Haiti, and more are being dug.
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6 Responses to “EveryDay Now, The News Comes to Kill Me With Eidetic Images”
I did not need to see that second picture…
That last picture says it all. I understand about infectious diseases, but I hate to see the dead treated so irreverently. That looked like a child's body.
Thank you, cpe, for the reminder of life's reality. We can shield ourselves from the truth by refusing to see or hear the devastation that is around us…but this never disguises the fact of human suffering. Your poem is so truthful in its naked sentiment and powerful imagery…nothing more needs to be said. love to you in all your writing.
' and this too. . .and this too. . .' to keep the heart open in this world with love and service by grace and the humility of there go I. . . . . Thank you Dr. E. . . .'and this too.'
It is sad, whatever the necessary expediency, that there is no time for Haitians, as a tribe, as a family, to mourn their dead, to draw near to their spirits, to call on their voodoo, for a time of silent commemoration.
A contrast from the first to the second is what goes on in the mind, from beauty in love of living and the second the coldness of reality. . . even of that same nature, what happens to be accidental forces of nature.
But doesn,t it also awaken us to cherish what we have in the moment of those who live safely away from the locality of brutality in any form? I think it shows the world that we are all of one body and nobody is immune to a visitation that tries their very soul.
Powerful and vivid poem
Thanks Dr. E