Monday, August 06, 2018

Hiroshima Day - poem

at 8:15 am on August 6th 1945, 63 years ago, Hiroshima was destroyed by a small nuclear bomb. Our responsibility is to convince everyone that we must clear these weapons from the face of Earth.




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.





(c)        Richard Lawson
24/7/2015

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