A POEM FOR OFUNATO

Ofunato view

For the last week Kenneth Cukier, a Tokyo-based correspondent for The Economist, has been visiting disaster zones in north-eastern Japan to contribute to the paper's coverage of the "hydra-headed disaster". Met with the devastation of Ofunato, where a massive tsunami swept away entire towns, Mr Cukier felt that poetry, not journalism, could best capture the situation.

The Human Spirit
A poem for Ofunato

Huddled and cold, many so elderly, evacuees making their way
The clasped hands of a woman scouring a newspaper's names
The tears of survivors greeting for the first time
(First, the gratitude of life; then, the whispers of death)

A city: obliterated. Small universes: annihilated.
Now, calm. Now, digging—not to rebuild but to bury the dead
There, I saw a carpenter's plane and unbroken cup
A reminder of something past and something ahead

— March 17, 2011; Ofunato, Japan Ofunato pray