And it rained, oh how it rained.

Like a monsoon on Zanzibar it bucketed down on the unwary Sydney denizens.

Oh! They dashed and they scattered their way splashing through the deluge, but all was hopeless, all would be soaked. Some gathered under sagging awlings only for a breath of wind to spill the pregnant canvasses merrily onto the unsuspecting victims sheltering beneath.

Children kicked spray at each other, lovers splashed one another and some simply resigned to themselves to their fate and soldiered on with a foolish grin wrapped firmly to their embarrassed faces.

While I looked on.

Taxis sloshed throught the sudden running rivers coursing down the streets like a raging flood, buses tore through the rip tides havocing this damp corner of the metropolis, improbably, several fire engines raced to a blaze of unimaginable proprotion that this tumult of water could not quench.

A young Korean looking man picked up his white dressed girl and piggybacked her across the road but to little effect as a lorry slewed a waterfall over their bent backs. But they smiled. Everyone wondered at this torrent, even the most hardened of Sydney denizens shook their heads at this strangeness.

The mad mutering tinwhistle player at the corner of Chinatown had finally stopped playing the same tune, the only tune he seemed to know and cowered now suspiciously under an awning, having seen the fate that others had befallen.

The roads ran rivers for a good half hour after the deluge, the drains seemed incapable of swallowing the sheer capacity of the swollen heavens.

There were two small Chinese children.

One, a girl, in blue sweet silk, not more than nine or ten. Her brother, I assumed, in a wedding three piece looking impossibly old for his what now four years? Their proud parents stood them in fornt of the lion, the guardian of Chinatown and snapped their boxes to remind them of this magical day, their sweet innocence and impatient fidgits as they writhed so cutely in their uncomfortable clothes. The father caught my smiling eyes, and winkinly grinned, understanding my shared delight at their vital and beautiful youth.

No-one heard the van suddenly slew across the tramway and plough into the children, scattering their tiny bodies like broken scarecrows with a sickening snapping thud and the metallic quick screech of tortured metal. It appeared to have aquaplaned, gliding uncontrollably on the river that now ran with the blood and broken bones of the young children squirming just a few seconds earlier in their stifling suits before their adoring proud parents.

There was a shocked stillness as people momentarily paused, and then as one dropped their shopping and their moments and sped towards the tragedy, wanting to help, wanting to believe, wanting anything but the awful unravelling truth.

It was five full minutes before the sirens sounded, and the doctors ploughed their way into the carnage.

There was nothing I could do.

I trembled and shook, and when sufficiently gathered I removed myself from the wreckage of life lost and the desolate ruin of love. From the wailings of strangers, the tears that helped wash the road river clean of the blood spilled.

All that would remain were the pixels of their existence.

A poor reproduction. And all that the parents would have left.

At times like this, there is a gnawing at the heart, a sense of helplessness, that such a sensless accident could occur within Gods domain. It had to be written, this is my confession, the way that I can come to terms with that joy squashed so brutally by that unforgiving hammer. To bear powerless witness to such carnage, to such broken hope, is a hard cross to bear, but dwindles to nothing when remembering the eyes and smiles of the oh so proud parents as they locked briefly with mine before their world was ripped asunder.

Perhaps it is as well that I depart this wonderful land, but would that I could have written a better epitaph.

My heart bleeds silently, and weeps wretchedly, for there is nothing worse than a parent outliving their children.

And having to be witness to such despair.

yechydda,