“… a horrible black smudge, as though a Hand had come down and rubbed the place smooth. I know now what being wiped out means.”The ruddy Kipling in a boat
Was touring Puget Sound the day
Seattle burned. He wrote a note
About the sight of soot that lay
Across the landscape like a smudge
Some Hand (divine? infernal?) left
Where once a city stood. The grudge
That Being held — to leave bereft
A town, wiped out, crossed out, erased —
Raised questions of the shape of Love;
And yet no souls were lost, the waste
A miracle uncertain of
Interpretation till the light
That failed became reborn in sight.
Recent Comments