Anniversary of Death

HIROSHIMA

The city death enveloped,
where black rain descended when
i was barely ten months old,
unable to grasp the horror.

When i approached sixty years,
finally made my pilgrimage
to ground zero and became witness
to the madness that only war enlivens.

I made my pilgrimage
to ask forgiveness
for human folly and
speak silently my prayer for peace.


HIROSHIMA REVISITED

Big Boy it was called
revered and admired by its creators
exalted by crazed politicians
who understood the power
coming from its possession and use.

In but a few earthly seconds,
it transformed a busy city
into a caldron of death,
a landscape of dying
where the last gasps of
hundreds of thousands souls
were catapulted skyward.

Survivors including
thousands of school children
became armies of walking dead
skin dangling from their bodies
like grotesque ornaments,
made prisoners by a pain so severe
as to render them senseless.

Overhead, technicians of the doomed
took photographs,
the mission proclaimed an
overwhelming success.

Three short days went by
barely enough time for the reality
of mass murder to be understood
before Nagasaki was likewise destroyed.

Victory over evil was proclaimed,
America was apoplectic with joy,
such is the handiwork of empire.