I Watched

I watched as New Orleans was violently and cruelly
Inundated by raging Katrina.
I watched as men, like animals,
Annihilated the Other in the name of survival.
I beheld the displaced homes and the marred cars
And the charcoaled dead bodies scattered across
The landscape like the seed of a sower.
I saw the waving banners and white flags
and heard the cries
And the pleas for salvation.
But no one heard and no one came.

Then I turned my eyes and watched as
Wave after wave invaded the man made walls
That Aneyoshi and Fukushima constructed for protection.
I watched as the deep sea, black and hideous,
In an unrelenting fury
Suffocated the city and overturned her defenses.
No man, woman, or child spared.
I watched as the waters rose
and drank those eastern junks
And tore down her bridges and crushed her homes
And overwhelmed her crops
And trespassed every corner of her domain.


I watched desperation and panic flush Japan’s tender face
And I heard her pitiful soft cries for salvation
Each one to another crying out, “The end has come! The end has come!”
But no one heard and no one came.

Then I turned my eyes and watched as
Buildings collapsed and dust and dirt filled every lung.
I watched the utter decimation of hotels, churches and temples
Each one a wound upon itself.

I watched as men, women, and children lay in a grey fog of debris
A debris which hid their faces in a quiet shroud of dust.
I watched as Haiti and Chile were shaken and buried beneath their own buildings.
Each one imbibed by the thirsty and broken Earth.

I watched these atrocities, one by one, and my tears did not cease until the dawn.
I wept for the children and I wept for the Fathers.
I wept for those unheard and unseen.
I wept for those who had no savior and for those who alone were saved.

Then I turned my eyes and watched as
The undetected ocean came raging toward pagan India.
I watched as the sea angrily billowed
And took into itself the inhabitants of the land.
I watched as the cold, merciless, undaunted waters
Surged through the city streets and did not stop.


I watched with great fear and sorrow in my heart
As I saw myself in the eyes of those heathens.
I heard a preacher scream, “It is the justice of God!”
“His wrath upon their wickedness!”
But I did not rejoice.
I did not dance upon the chains of justice or clap with the song
Of judgment.
I was not joy’d by the desolation.

No! I cried aloud with the perishing and sought refuge just as the dying!
I begged for mercy like those drowning
And reached for hands of salvation just as those abandoned.
When their hands bled - mine did.
When their faces wept - mine did.
Their loss became my loss
And their death, my death.

I have seen the cries of the dying
And heard the lament of the forsaken.
I do not rejoice at the sorrow of sinners
Nor am I excited at their destruction.


Joshua Clayton