The spring Vancouver sang “Something’s Happening

Here,” something happened over there. 
It’s still happening.
The prince and princess opened

65 pavilions, a highway

of stalled vehicles, an alabaster statue

behind glass. The city had arrived. 



                                      . . . 


Gorbachenko suffered a radiation burn on his back where Sashenok’s hand was

located when he helped carry him out.
Vomiting and losing

consciousness. Pins and needles,

a taste of metal.


                                      . . . 


41 international + 7 provincial + 2 territorial + 3 state + 9 corporate + 2 theme + 1

special (treasures from the life of a pharaoh).


                                      . . . 


Just before it happened and before

it opened, Gram died

and there were sandwiches.

A new haircut she wouldn’t see.


                                  . . . 


Scavengers strip all metals.

Visitors ditch protective garments

at set intervals.

More horses than ever.
On Google Earth, a place of rivers.


                                      . . . 


She’d have remembered when they found

another pharaoh’s tomb. (The curse

of the mosquito, wonderful things.) 
Though she didn’t know she’d be gone

before Expo opened, she hadn’t planned to go.

Too many steps to get there

though just three kilometres

if one could fly.


                                      . . . 


The man with the hand on his back.

The glass roof, fallen in instalments.

Her kitchen print of Jesus.

The shut-up air that held the meddled relics.

The land plaza, the air plaza.

Near her ear, that purple spot.

Kaput.


                                      . . . 


But: the geodesic dome.

A child’s hair in a drain.

The book beside the bed.

Some benches, now perched near beaches.

A classroom floor through which a tree.

What the looters left.

The bookmark in the book beside the bed.

Cards for future birthdays.


                                      . . . 


The place on East 4th  lives there still,

made new. (Almost but not quite a street

you can go down onscreen. The time

of the cherry blossoms.) Of the cybercafé

on the corner, she would recognize the brick.


                                      . . . 


Her death, the last turn

of the turnstiles, not disasters.
In Kiev, they held the May parade

but no children of the government

went out that day.
Five years later, the princess

visited Chernobyl’s children, listened,

stroked their cancers. Click here to see her

lean her head into her hands. Even thinner

than at Expo. Listen

to the shutters.


                                      . . . 


Twenties set aside inside

a granddaughter card in one of many drawers,

enough for an ankh, Egyptian symbol

of eternal life. Sixteen, trying on irony

or was it hope.


                                      . . . 


As for the #4 reactor . . . , we estimate it will be 20,000 years before the real estate

will be fully safe.

Real estate?

Only the old were allowed back.

 
                                      . . . 


Her house brought in thousands less than Asking.

The adjoining lot, with dandelions,

next to nothing.
It all started after Expo

they say. Then the skyline

filled with cranes.


                                      . . . 


Her last steps up the steps.

Back from dinner for her 87th
No, she was not in bed,

she had gotten up,

the bathroom was a small room, hardly

large enough to fall,

though she must have.
The heart of course.


                                      . . . 


What happened over there clicks up through the trunks, the blades of grass.

Swallows with cataracts nest in the sarcophagus.


                                      . . . 


Where it happened, a whole

new city. They had to clean

the soil first, before they built

the glass towers.


                                      . . . 


Someone on Facebook has her name.


                                      . . . 


The lone and level sands.











Italicized material from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster