The Fifty
Soldiers go to battle knowing they may die one day,
or return home to glory, having faced hell and returned to tell
Today we watch another kind of battle, unable to look away
As fifty men stand before a bottle full of ghostly demons
Their fragile lives flickering as they struggle
The dull beat of a metronome measuring their fate
Familiar faces from another world pass before their eyes,
a world forgotten five days and an eternity ago.
They crawl and climb and struggle with scalding steel
While watching gauges rise and fall, measuring the demon's hate
Klaxons fell silent long before, their voices exhausted
They have nothing more to say, their cries ignored
The men see invisible ghosts everywhere now,
Creeping through broken pipes and darkened halls
They imagine they can feel them stealing their future away
Reaching out to touch them through leaden suits and shattered walls
Then two men fall in a burst of rage and flame
Extinguished in turn until another rises
The rest strive grimly to quench the demon's rage
No time to grieve, no time to mourn, time is the enemy
Another endless hour passes, but their badges turned black long ago
Still the contest goes on, demonic fury unabated by unbreakable spirit
Those men know they cannot read the sign on the road they travel
The one placed there by Fate, that marks their end
Have they passed it already? Does it lie far ahead?
It does not matter. The demons still scream in silent challenge.
While the rest of us stop, and stare, and wonder
If we could stand before a bottle full of ghostly demons
A tribute to the 50 workers struggling to control the Fukushima Daiichi plant
Really badly written. Sorry. I don't do poetry, but I had to express something.