[stylist] Sonnet - "Hiroshima" - Finalish Draft

[William L Houts]

Hey Friends,

I wrote this some time ago, but as we've just passed the 70th 
anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, I thought I'd post it for wits and 
giggles.  I don't think it's a very good sonnet, really, though it might 
be an adequate poem and deserves to live on in my poetry folder, where I 
can perform intermittent operations on it, preferably without 
anesthesia.  I did something weirdass with the present tense for some 
reason; probably to lend the poem a more immediate feeling, but it's 
been so long that I shrink from speculating any further on that score.


--Bill


---

Hiroshima

No enemies were bombed, no tanks or planes:

just people walking dogs or bringing home

their fish and rice from market stalls while chains

of splitting atoms high above become

a lightning hellish holocaust which rains

a nightmare poison down, a billion wraths.

Today, the children fold their paper cranes

and pray to save the world from psychopaths.

But that's a country with an ancient mind,

where history is taught and facts retained.

America, I fear, is not that kind

Our virgin state, when lost, is e'er regained.

To learn and leave the past?We're not inclined:

our nation's got a faint, forgetful mind!








-- 


"Oh, Sophie!  Whyfore have you eated all de cheeldren?"