Mourners’ Lament After Catastrophe

We find the survivors, we bury the dead.

We pull our hair, we weep, we gnash our teeth.

Let us keen and wail and hold each other.

But let us not ask why.

From why we created gods,

wanting order and reason in the world,

wanting to believe propitiating the right gods in the right way

would keep us from harm.

But, O, such harm has come to us!

Despite our prayers and sacrifices, such harm has come to us!

So let us rend our garments,

cover ourselves with dirt,

crawl on our bellies on this unforgiving earth.

Let this forgiving earth take our tears as she will take our bones.

Let our grief and confusion drive us into each other's arms.

Let us stroke each other’s hair, clasp each other to our bosoms.

Let us exclude no one from our grieving, even the terrible-making ones—

the ones who pillaged, who raped, who killed.

Let us keen our grief for them, our sons, our fathers, our brothers and husbands.

Let us grieve that they lost their way, took a road into the dark, and found dark things they brought home with them.

Them most of all, let us clasp to our bosoms and hold, as we weep for them and for those they've killed.

And when we have exhausted our tears, let us collapse onto the earth in a long dreamless sleep, so that when we rise, we can see again the young ones who still want our laughter and our play.

Let us see again the dawn on the horizon and the waves lapping the shore and the berries in the forest.

Let us dig through the destruction to find what can be salvaged to rebuild our homes or carried away to begin again.

If we have to leave this place, let us search out all the good seeds we know to carry away with us.

For these are the things we can see.

These are the things we can do.

Why we cannot see.

With why there is nothing we can do.

Let us lay down why with the ashes and the bones.

Laying down why, we soften into the tenderness of and what now?