Friday poetry challenge: on hands and poems

Dead air is anathema to radio broadcasters, but sometimes silence speaks louder than words. Yesterday an NPR reporter trying to describe the horrors of the Haitian earthquake choked up mid-sentence, resulting in a silence more expressive than any attempt to capture the disaster in nouns and verbs.

In the face of such suffering, what can poetry do? Martin Espada tackles the question in "Not Words but Hands," a poem addressed to a fellow poet grieving over the tragic loss of his partner and child. "We have no words for you," admits Espada, and this silence before suffering makes poets "prophets with tongues missing / like the clappers of empty bells." When words fail, though, "We only have our hands, to soap your shirts / or ladle soup for you, grip your shoulder / or dim the lamp."

Right now Haiti needs hands (to drive bulldozers, set broken bones, bury bodies) and those of us whose hands can't help ought to send money to empower other hands. But after describing the importance of hands, Espada concludes his poem by asserting that "this, this poem, / this is my hand."

After the bulldozers power down and the dust settles, what words will flow in to fill the silence? If a poem can place a hand on a survivor's shoulder, what poem extends your hand?