Shocked and trapped
By the sudden gigantic waves,
Seismic waves that knew no mercy,
Came from the Pacific,
To the island of Honshu.
Scenes of mass devastation,
In the Land of Cherry Blossoms.

A crying husband saved himself
On a roof,
Held his dear wife’s hand.
The hand slipped away,
And the debris-laden water
Swept her away.

‘Tsunami? I can’t abandon my car.’
The wife knows the danger,
Follows her survival instinct,
Runs to a tall house,
With a heavy heart she watches,
Her husband being swept away,
In his precious automobile.

What use the drill,
To crouch under a table,
When the earth quakes in Honshu,
A tsunami stealthily approaches you?
The gigantic wall of salty water,
Pushes and crushes humans, machines and buildings,
Like puppets.

A fire broke out in an oil refinery
In Chiba,
In the prefecture of Miyagi.
The underground electric trains came to a halt.

Nature gone awry,
Submarine tectonic plate movements,
Earthquakes and nuclear emissions,
Atomic alarms in Onagawa and Tokai.
Fukushima didn’t cool,
The reactors exploded,
The world held its breath.

Hokaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu,
Japan is shocked traumatically.
For the older generation it was
A revival of the spectre,
Of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
The Japanese are well-prepared against quakes,
But not against a nuclear holocaust.

Why are children taught
The good and bad aspects
Of nuclear energy,
When the good uses can be marred
When reactors get old,
Earthquakes shake the earth,
The magma below becomes active,
When volcanoes explode,
Landslides of earth movements occur.

To add insult to injury,
The volcano Shinmoedake spews
Ash and hot stones,
In the Nipponese air.