Turkey-Syria Earthquakes Were So Undeserving And So Inescapable Poem by Bernedita Rosinha Pinto

Where was the time to flee
where was the time to escape
where was the time to catch the rope
and slide down?
where was the chance to jump out?
when so quickly right in the niche
of their own apartments they perished and got buried,
never to open their eyes again
never to see the dawn again
never to even see their own mothers and fathers again,
or talk to their own sisters and brothers again;
never to see their own spouses again
nor never to see their own children ever again.

How could fate so inconsiderate
to dis-connect them
from their very own families
and cast gloom and grief
so collectively, so pitilessly
that none could console the other
that none could wipe their own tears;
that none could be unruffled
by the destruction and devastation
that the earthquakes had bestowed upon them.

If only had time chosen
another day, another place
or perhaps another desert land,
or another ocean or sea
for those earthquakes to surface,
so many lives would have been spared
of that merciless fate;
a fate so unforgivable,
a confrontation so unforgettable.

And as years will pass,
tears will not pass
as memories will arrive,
grief will not depart;
as prayers will be murmured,
agony will not vanish
that as the moon will shine every night
on those horizons of sorrow,
no sleep will be ever easy
without those nightmares
of falling buildings upon their loved ones.

And anguish will always invade
silently and certainly in those hearts and minds
that even if the moon forgets to appear
after the no-moon night,
the recollections of those earthquakes
will never get detached
from those who will grief
until their own time on this earth subsides
and silences their own mournful cries.

As to remember the words - mama and papa
every surviving parent will long for,
and the yearning to call out or hear the voices
of their children and their siblings
they will always wait for;
while one city will look another city
while one country will pray for another country
while the world will help both the countries
will Turkey and Syria ever succeed to move out
of that aftermath which the earthquakes
have imposed upon them so undeservingly?
If only had mercy to declare its supremacy
so many would have still been alive and breathing.