Patrick Ryan Dunn Suvillan 的一首短诗

At Fukuoka

I step ashore and
see
only streets, bare streets,
nothing along them
to bespeak a city
where
once stood
homes, hospitals, hotels,
courthouses, firehouses, butchershops,
fish markets, cafes, groceries,
dairies, playgounds, schools,
post offices, drugstores, factories,
stadiums, temples, churches.

Inside the now
two dimensional
polygon street geometry
there is only
rubble
work product of long-distance, lever-
pulling, switch-pressing , bomb-blasting
war
by unblooded fly-boys
who saw only brown puffs
or bright flashes,
no dismembered mothers,
no charbroiled children,
far below.

Along the polygons
I make out
not a lintel, not a stud, not a fascia,
not a jamb, not a door frame, not a pillar,
not a rafter, not a joist, not a gable,
not a stair step, not a table, not a see-saw,
not a butcher block, not a pew, not an alter,
not a law book, not a fire hose, not a school desk,
only charred shattered
rubble.