For all the storms that come
On Tuesday, October 29, my home near Valencia, Spain, was lashed with the most extraordinary storm I’ve ever experienced. More than 220 people died.
Associated Press: Unprecedented Floods in Spain
As the scope of the tragedy began to sink in (a process that’s ongoing), I kept thinking of a line from Jack Gilbert’s poem ‘Trouble’
everything on fire in the violent winds
That’s how it felt. How it feels, as every routine journey reveals another mud-blanched plain, more storm-flattened trees, more cars with blown-out windows stacked helter-skelter against abutments
.
On Tuesday, November 5, another fury was unleashed.
The consequences of it are not yet fully known, but it’s safe to say damage to life, safety, property and infrastructure lie ahead.
I return to the words of Zbigniew Herbert, a Polish resistance fighter turned anti-Soviet dissident whose poem ‘The Envoy of Mr Cogito’ is the best thing I’ve ever read on what to do when facing the unthinkable (hint: don’t let it become unspeakable).
Courage, friends.