Tags
photo: Hurricane by Michelle McLoughlin Milford Conn.
…round the clock warnings followed by wet drumming in the flower beds….. <>Patricia Smith “Ghazal” from Blood Dazzler
The end of the street here, open like the archetypal breach in a castle wall… a war of water. Sandy. Then there’s the morning photo of the subway in New York City that made my heart drop [see below]… down there in the shosh and dark water, collapsed dream of cars-on-tracks gliding beneath the city. It helps to put words to this impossible, terrible wreckage. Here are some poetry lines that speak to catastrophe. Patricia Smith’s National Book Award winner: Blood Dazzler, about Katrina, has some phrases that resonate with Hurricane Sandy. Here the hurricane speaks:
Weather is nothing until it reaches skin, Freezes dust, spits its little swords. Kept to oceans, feeding only on salted water, I was a rudderless woman in full tantrum, Throwing my body against worlds I wanted….. <>Patricia Smith, “Katrina”100 years and more have passed since Bryant wrote these words:
Lord of the winds! I feel thee nigh, I know thy breath in the burning sky!… …in your place The shadowy tempest that sweeps through space, A whirling ocean that fills the wall Of the crystal heaven, and buries all. And I, cut off from the world, remain Alone with the terrible hurricane. <>William Cullen Bryant, “The Hurricane”Oh Hurricane ravaged East Coast! You are in my prayers and the prayers of the world. Sending all the people strength!
CompleteWord 