The city wounded at its heart
The steeple shattered in the street
The founder and his plinth apart
Ruamoko not yet replete.
Each tremor the lament repeats –
A severance of peace from place
A déjà vu of loss and grief
A pillaging of time and space.
In sufferance but not defeat
Cantabrians roll sleeves, make fast
then hold each other’s hands and seek
new beginnings, built on their past.
As you may be aware, I am working for EQC and have been since the 4 Sep 2010 earthquake. EQC asked me to write a poem for Canterbury for the front of their Annual Report. This is the poem I wrote (with one or two changes since) but I am not sure it made it to the final version of the report. So, here it is as Tuesday Poem this week. Along with 'Name-calling' (see my 8 Nov Tuesday Poem) I see it forming part of a sequence of poems involving Ruamoko, the Earthquake God. Keep an eye out for future Ruamoko poems on this blog and visit Tuesday Poem for more poems this week.
The final stanza caught me with this poem - 'make fast then hold each other's hands and seek new beginnings, built on their past'. I'm looking forward to seeing how these Ruamoko poems play out in sequence in future posts. Thanks, Keith!
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