Thursday, December 01, 2016

The Promise of Hiroshima




It was all so beautiful.
Mathematics could dissect reality itself,
Complex, and finely balanced,
A logan rock that moves with just a touch,
and through these mysteries
we came to understand
the energy constrained within a grain of sand.

Infinitesimal becomes
unbounded power.
One plane, one flash
One whole town gone to dust.
Nothing except a few skeletal lines
Some shadow where a man had been.
Silence, apart from screams.

For some, that was success.
And this is how it stays. We live
under the sword of Damocles
death dangling by a hair,
our fallibility denied.
We live beneath the constant threat,
our wilful ignorance of hell.

As if the sheer perfection of the science
could purge the politicians' faults.
As if the discipline
that led them to unlock the door
could somehow spread itself
into the corrupted soul and mind
of those whose stock in trade is lies.





  1. Richard Lawson
    24/7/2015
Just reviewing my poems, weeding out the sickly ones. Found this. Thought the last line chimes in with the present world situation.

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