Krakatoa Fragments

Perhaps I can describe the horror of hearing,

in this heathen world,

the trumpet of the gods blown far and wide.

Perhaps I can attempt.

Human skeletons washed to the shores

completing their odysseys on rafts

rent from the bloated corpse of Krakatau.

One bent its head,

seemed to regard its fellow damned and say,

‘How beautiful are we, adorning our own tombs,

forever drifting towards a quiet resting place.’

A sea-bird taking flight, freeing his prey,

Dislodged another bony mass who seemed

To earnestly reply: ‘Before today,

I may not have known you or what you did

for who you loved, but now your soul is bound

to mine forever.

We join such naked beauty in our deaths

as Egyptian kings wrapped in their succulence.”

And searching across the scarred land,

a single spider, crouched in the crags

and crevices assumed the appearance of prayer:

Up towards the gods no animal should know.

But throwing dust and ash behind shoulders

Would never raise a life on Krakatau.

Why was only this creature left alive?

Everything taken from his life, an arachnoid Job,

except that there is nothing to test within the faith

of a spider, who works and dies without the things

we consider necessary for faith.

Was this world cleansed to make sterility

or was a sterile world destroyed

to make a better one?

Not much makes sense, not much can be explained.