Tsunami.(Poem)

 
TSUNAMI 
 
   The video cameras--duty-free Christmas gifts--capture 
   the spectacle as the waves roll 
   with simple persistence through rows of palmtrees 
   and over the hotel balconies; a delivery van lifts 
   and collides with a building which begins to unscroll 
   as though marked for demolition in somebody's 
 
   town plan; water surges uphill through the streets 
   and through the souvenir shops, the pole-dancing 
   nightclubs, the boy-only brothels, the ancient moss-grown temple, 
   and the market stalls, and its rise completes 
   the erasure of decadent Westerner, entrancing 
   colourful native, and Muslim extremist equally. Its force is 
   simple. 
  ...