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