Earthquake Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

Earthquake in Haiti

The corpses look like they have been flung down from the sky,
rejected by god for being too poor. Broken limbs and stillness in
the dust. There is a groundswell of a cry, a primitive anger that
has nowhere to go, but inwards eating the victims of injustice like
a virulent cancer. We are religious people who do our Ave Marias
and voodoo on the side. We pray to god and saints, so why this
devastation? Long deep trenches, a place for obese bodies, many
with hands stretching skywards as asking why did you forsake us?
And as always the heaven is silent, yet in the absence of hope and
the rumor of an angel is walking amongst the poor blessing them,
there is hope. But more body fall, rejected by the heaven; and our
bishop is dead too. The cry of anguish will tear us apart till we lose
our reason, sink to our knees and pray to a god that knows no mercy;
as cadavers keep falling from an indifferent sky.