Lanterns are needed even at noon.
People move through a dusty gloom
of ashes and soot, our prayers rising
as we sing in the streets, all together,
everyone expecting sudden doom.
If this combination of war
followed by earthquakes
and a volcanic eruption
is not the end of the world,
then it must be a new beginning
of brotherly love, as everyone joins
our united effort to find survivors.
We succeed, but the government’s print shop
has been destroyed.
There will be no published book of my poems,
just these scribbled papers, my treasury,
a battered suitcase
filled with verses.