Turkey-Syria Earthquakes - Where Mercy Forgot Its Duty Poem by Bernedita Rosinha Pinto

No bombs, no bullets
no guns, no war-tanks
no soldiers, no gunshots
no missiles, no explosions
but those buildings and apartments
were abruptly converted into dust and debris
in Turkey and Syria by earthquakes
while people were still sleeping,
awaiting for the next morning to wake them;

but before they knew it
the devastation, the destruction
sparked by those recurrent earthquakes
which were so intense in magnitude
so rough in attitude
toppled their buildings to the ground
taking away their lives
so mercilessly and so ruthlessly
without even classifying the young and the old
without even sparing the children nor their dreams;

how could earthquakes choose
to crush the calm existence
of two cities that were so resilient?
how could two countries lose their cities
and their people all in a jiffy
as those apartments kept falling to the floor
without any chance to stop the inevitability?
was this the fate and destiny of those
who have no chance to escape fatality
when nature takes on its game of fury?

And where was divine compassion hiding its face,
where was empathy flapping its wings
when those earthquakes rocked those cities
and capsized those buildings
taking so many innocent lives beneath the ground
so instantly without any mercy or pity
thus leaving gloom and grief, tears and hopes
in the eyes and hearts of those who will survive the wrath
and as they will live on and look at those fallen buildings,
one will never deter to ask another-
was it worth to be born just to die like this?