The Tuesday Poem: An Earthquake Poem Diptych—”All Over” and “The Sparrows”

All Over

On that first afternoon

it was all about noise:

sirens, the continual tuk-tuk-tuk

of helicopters, and the slow drone

of freight planes airlifting in supplies—noise

and the smell of smoke

hanging in a pall

across the inner suburbs

as the CTV building burned.

But in the days following

I recall the silence of a city

where daily business had all but ceased,

cars off the road, people staying home

or fled—over 70,000 now

the pundits claim, since February 22nd—

and at night the profound darkness

of a power...