"...emotions recollected in tranquility."

The picture is my rendering and recreation of how it might have looked on that fateful Tuesday morning in the area of my village hit worst by the wave.

It’s been a year already since the tsunami. And I have quietly struggled with the challenge of how to express my emotions and feelings about the catastrophe which has literally wiped many of my childhood memories, especially of our home in Lalomanu. Writing, especially poems, had been a means of recourse and escapism for me. One of my favorite poets, William Wordsworth, defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recollected in tranquility." That has been true in my case.

What I find more fascinating is Wordsworth’s claim that "poetry is most just to its own divine origin when it administers the comforts and breathes the spirit of religion."  Poems - with the spirit of religion - have been my main source of solace and reassurance. I’ve intended "Tuesday Mourning" to be one such poem.

Tuesday Mourning - by LV Letalu

From far beneath the fiery earthly core
A deadly force gushed crushed and tore
It squirmed skyward and defied sanity
It defied gravity and magnified vanity

It opened the mantle the plates and crust
Through solid rocks and ocean floor it thrust
Upward and heavenward until it surfaced
A sad story of sorrow and death it prefaced

The calm giant ocean would soon tremble
Speed and strength it would quietly assemble
In a different deadly disguise it would travel
Indiscriminate disaster for Man to marvel

The wave formed and the beast was born
Alive and angry it came that Tuesday morn
With resounding roar and rumbling to foretell
The fatal and fiery fiend fleeing from Hell

The villagers had never seen such a beast
With sharp horns and fangs ready to feast
It billowed like a monster in a silver hood
It was vicious violent and in vengeful mood

This Tuesday the sea was a mount not a hill
It grew taller, higher then closed in for the kill
It crept and swept those who suddenly slept
After it left, families wailed waned and wept

The old the young the mothers and infants
Met their fates as if were merciless miscreants
Though stripped unexpectedly of life and dignity
Will one day see the Light and solemn serenity

The Sun was true and had risen that morning
No doubt it stopped to witness Tuesday mourning
Though it sets it still rises with gleaming glory
And so with man as heroes in Heaven’s story

The Hero wounded died and went to Earth’s core
Calmed the beast, conquered Death and slept no more
He rose early morn and ascended to Home supernal
To raise the quick and the dead to Life eternal

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more renderings ....

"Galu Afi" (Wave of Fire)

"Galu Lolo" (Tidal Wave)