{"id":6876,"date":"2011-07-19T06:30:52","date_gmt":"2011-07-18T18:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=6876"},"modified":"2014-02-17T22:01:08","modified_gmt":"2014-02-17T09:01:08","slug":"tuesday-poem-this-will-be-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/07\/19\/tuesday-poem-this-will-be-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poem: “This Will Be Us”"},"content":{"rendered":"

This Will Be Us<\/strong><\/h3>\n

This will be us, one day \u2014
\nfaded photographs
\nfor archivists and future
\ngenerations to pore over,
\nspeculating on how
\nwe must have felt, what
\nit must have been like \u2026
\n\u2026 being lowered
\nfrom a high building
\non ropes, or having one foot
\namputated in situ<\/em>
\nby a policeman to free
\nthe rest of the body
\nfrom the rubble
\nof a collapsed building.
\n.<\/span>
\nOr perhaps these historians
\nyet to come may stare
\nat footage of suburbs flooded
\nby silt and sewerage
\nafter groundwater was forced
\nup by the shock waves
\nand mains burst
\neverywhere; all the bridges
\nbetween Cathedral Square
\nand the sea closed,
\nbar one, and holes
\nopening in roads \u2014
\nlarge enough
\nto swallow SUVs.
\n.<\/span>
\nOr will those to come
\npause instead over photos
\nof the student volunteers,
\nshovels in hand
\nas they move en masse
\nto dig out half a city,
\ndust whipping up
\ninto a grit storm
\naround them …\u00a0 And yet,
\nhow could that future observer
\nfeel more
\nthan a passing wonder,
\na flash of empathy \u2026
\n.<\/span>
\n… any more than we do now
\nwhen looking at old records
\nof past disasters:
\nthe great pandemic, say,
\nthat followed World War 1,
\nor the Wahine storm \u2014
\nand only fleetingly imagine
\nthe reality that these people \u2014
\nflickers on a newsreel,
\nstills in a frame \u2014
\nexperienced, lived through,
\nendured.<\/p>\n

.<\/span>
\n\u00a9 Helen Lowe, 2011
\n.<\/span>
\nThis poem is dedicated to the police and rescue services, and to the Student Volunteer Army, the Farm-y Army, and all the other volunteers who picked up whatever they had and “did for others”<\/em>* after each of the major earthquakes of September 4, 2010, and February 22 and June 13, 2011, in Christchurch.<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

* from Forever Young<\/em>, by Bob Dylan<\/p>\n

” \u2026 may you always do for others
\nand let others do for you \u2026” <\/em><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub<\/strong> and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here<\/strong><\/a> or on the Quill<\/strong> icon<\/strong> in the sidebar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This Will Be Us This will be us, one day \u2014 faded photographs for archivists and future generations to pore over, speculating on how we must have felt, what it must have been like \u2026 \u2026 being lowered from a high building on ropes, or having one foot amputated in situ by a policeman to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-earthquakepoems","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6876"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24634,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6876\/revisions\/24634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}