If I should learn, in some quite casual way,
That you were gone, not to return again --
Read from the back-page of a paper, say,
Held by a neighbor in a subway train,
How at the corner of this avenue
And such a street (so are the papers filled)
A hurrying man -- who happened to be you --
At noon to-day had happened to be killed,
I should not cry aloud -- I could not cry
Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place --
I should but watch the station lights rush by
With a more careful interest on my face,
Or raise my eyes and read with greater care
Where to store furs and how to treat the hair.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay
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Yesterday thousands of people where killed in Asia by a Tsunami created by a 9.0 earthquake, the biggest since 1964. At 11:30 am today the death tole was 22,000 but less than two hours later it was 23,680. Still some places, like the island of Sumatra, are yet to be heard from. Pictures of a mother pressing her child to her face, a child who cannot hear its mother's cries. A man wailing in the street; is he looking for his wife or brother? A Hindu man burns incence by a river as he sends prayers to a god who cannot hear him. There is no relief to their pain.
I wonder that life can go on with out a moment of thought. We think nothing of it. There is no pause to weep for the dead so far away.
Yesterday people died in bondage, now never to be freed from gods who held them in chains of fear and sin. Yet we do not even think or sorrow for the lost souls. Their death does not motivate us to move to reach greater numbers. Are we too caught up in ourselves to consider?
