Shock Cocoon

To the victims of the Japan tsunami who have born their ordeal with
grace and courage, and to first-responders everywhere whose daily work
is a sacrament - 'an exterior visible sign of an interior state of grace'."

Shock Cocoon

They say, not to worry the clouds, the rain,
do not worry, the wind. The sea will wash away
like the man on his bicycle turns and peddles away
over the rooftops, or she holds her mask to her face,
or carries kindling on her back, or someone's baby in his arms.
Not to worry, to survive they say, gaman.

they're leaving us to die, the mayor said,

fifty without faces, gaman.
a million without a place, gaman.
ten-thousand without names, gaman.
not to worry, not to be forgotten.

The rain will wash away, the clouds, the sea
number 4, number 2 will wash away,
the faces without names will wash away,
and the places, only the places gaman.
and the sea and the people, stunned.

I resent the nuclear plant, the doctor said.

Do not worry the clouds across the sea, the rain.
I will show you with paper and broomstick and fan,
the day, the sun, the means to not worry about things far away,
about the way to put out fires from above, to retrieve the ashes
of Pompeii, to remember the horrific rain of September,
the woman beyond the door, the glass, the napkins
on the table, undisturbed.

I'm having a really strange day, the officer said
in the blackness beneath the South Tower.

We will build you a shock cocoon, and they will find
someday across the sea, in the clouds, beneath the rain,
you comforted a wheezing man on the 62nd floor
or played becalming music on the deck of a sinking ship
or lingered with a speck of dying sun deep in your body
where a thousand paper cranes still whisper omoiyari
or as a rose—by name, the shadows of Vesuvius

the children of New York would grace
the doll of Hercules, reclaimed

the dazed and stunned, though oft bemused
witness to the split of wood, the lift of stone,
capricious facts that hide their face in stubborn riddle
as eons pass unnoticed by, to lie in wait
at the House of Souls, their names to emerge
from those fragile gray cocoons.

[Brief notes on "Shock Cocoon" are provided here" as an aid to interpretation.]

Related poem: "Thy Fearful Symmetry"

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