In my empathic/empathetic poetry readings in Edinburgh, I had the pleasure to interpret poems from other “Empathic Masters”.
Today I have the deep pleasure to share a poem I have got from Maria Mazziotti Gillan who sent me, at my request, the same one directly from the United States, which she herself selected considering it particularly empathetic.
I take this opportunity to remind to everyone what they already know about this wonderful talented, sensitive poet and scholar who explores with extreme kindness and brilliance her inner world and often the most vivid memories of her own existence.
Personally, I enjoy a lot reading and rereading this author’s poetry.
“In Japan, the Earthquake”
The TV newscaster shows scenes of Japan
after the earthquake and tsunami. Flashing
across the bottom of the screen, Japanese
concerned about the meltdown of a second reactor.
The Japanese evacuated the area for twelve miles
around the reactor. The air is already contaminated.
How easily we break, and once broken, how
can we be repaired? My daughter, even eight years
after her husband told her he met someone else
and wanted a divorce, has not healed. She trusts
no one. Retreats to the safety of her condo.
My daughter is still broken. I wish for her a daughter
like the one she has been to me, but even I, the optimist
of all optimists, no longer allow myself to believe.
In Japan, the nuclear reactor melting, the air contaminated,
they evacuated the area for twelve miles. It is already too late.
They say they tested people and though they test positive
for radiation, they’re not sick yet. I look at the picture
in the newspaper of a grandmother with her grandson
after the evacuation. She has her arms around him,
he leans into her chest. Imagine all the people who will die
from radiation, maybe not tomorrow or the next day but soon.
My daughter has been touched by the radiation
of her husband’s betrayal. She is only one person,
and though she is mine, I know that the world is full
of destruction. The TV announcer says the same thing
that happened in Japan could happen here—Indian Point
so close to huge centers of population. But we are Americans.
We believe we are invulnerable, We believe we are safe.
We are certain nothing like that can happen to us.
That night, my daughter’s husband told her,
“I have something to tell you and you’re not going to like it.”
But in the moments before his words hit her like bullets,
she did not suspect. She cooked dinner, washed the dishes,
hummed under her breath. She thought nothing bad
could happen to her, the man she loved in the living room,
she in the kitchen humming. The people in Japan
were going about their lives, while radiation seeped
into the air around them and they breathed it in.
— published in The Place I Call Home by Maria Mazziotti Gillan, The New York Quarterly Foundation, Inc., NYC. 2012.
Maria and I in Italy some years ago
