Mass Evacuation

April 15 2011

All the people had fled

in the emergency.

Dinner left

cooling on the kitchen table,

that will spawn maggots and mould

and turn to hard brown crust.

Tableau’s of daily life

under fine-grained dust,

rendered poignant

by lifeless objects  —

a door ajar, an open book,

its pages riffling in the scorching breeze

until they yellow

and stiffen.

The entire city

evicted.

Leaving a deathly stillness

that speaks of feverish haste.

Like a sentence, cut off

in the middle of a word.

Or a modern Pompeii, preserved   —

same as us, same petty concerns,

who didn’t see it coming

either.

Invisible poison

falling out.

A mass migration

before the invaders,

the inundation

of an angry sea.

A dark spot

on the X-ray

they said was routine.

When you  look the same

but everything’s changed

completely.

Or the empty chair

pushed back from the table

which will always be hers.

Was she taken away

by some force of nature?

Or did she flee

in fear for her life?

So the city’s been emptied out,

except for echoes

and absences.

Even the rats,

who gorged in the aftermath, reproducing like mad

then mysteriously vanished.

Abandoned the place,

or crawled out of sight

to die.

Who knew

how badly they needed us

to survive.

A poem inspired by the tragic events of Fukushima and Chernobyl:  those powerful images of entire cities, abandoned; of daily life, cut off in midstream. And in the case of Chernobyl, the poignancy of the undone things that have remained for decades, just as they were left.

And then I make the implicit comparison to other great life-altering events (a diagnosis of cancer, domestic violence):  when appearances are maintained, when nothing external changes, when the frail scaffolding of surface disguises the anguish and pain. The invisible absences.

My favourite part, though, is "crawled out of sight  /  to die". As well as the final stanza, the reference to rats and man:  a relationship which fails to elevate the rats, but somehow succeeds in diminishing us!