Brian Levison
News At Ten
Propped up in bed
comfortably insulated,
we flinch at the images
glinting across the screen.
Earthquake in Armenia
has levelled a city
like a child’s playful finger
toppling a house of cards
leaving thousands dead,
survivors days under rubble
in sub-zero temperatures:
Jet crashes on shopping centre
is a fighter falling out of the sky
onto a German town,
the random path of metal
slicing casual shoppers in two.
The scale - the arbitrariness
(going shopping then) -
I try to feel appropriate shock
but safely warm,
mostly I’m relieved
that it’s not here or me or you.
I almost tell you this
but just in time recall
what nearly slipped my mind
as real as the wrecked buildings
and scattered fuselage
as arbitrary and lethal -
I keep forgetting that for you it is.
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