sound effects
listen: the people caught near love
canal, in the nevada desert, around
the ukraine city pripyat can tell you
the sounds that precede catastrophe,
can teach you to train your ear on
a spring filled with caterpillars,
cranes, bulldozers, drills, cement
mixers, every building machine
you can’t even hear yourself think
of. the sound of clay caps being laid
over barrels in a forgotten grave,
of entrances to underground testing
facilities clanging shut, of alarms
trying their panicked tongues, and
safety valves wrenched into place.
and before those, the human-scale
sounds of thick reports dropping
like tombstones onto legislators’
and regulators’ desks, the polite
hum of lobbyists’ voices through
the opaque haze of public hearings,
the echoing reverberations of stats
and studies and guarantees as tall
as tales of the fountain of youth,
and as thin, within (and propped up
by) those unread stacks of paper.
the catastrophe itself vibrates on
a much lower frequency. at times
it is announced with a great fanfare
of fiery explosions, but the booming
is not the disaster, nor the hot red-
orange flag crackling in the charcoal
wind. the disaster follows—or makes
its approach unheralded—in dead
silence. the soundless strain of despair
pulling on the nerves that connect
the brain to the unbearable. the less
than quietness of chemicals seeping
into water, radiation emanating with
the brilliant hush of the sun. listen:
we know how birth sounds—but
what is the sound of a birth defect?
there are no bombs in the wars our
cells wage upon themselves at such
toxic emissions’ urging. no birdsong
accompanies the ungrowing spring.
—for fukushima
