[stylist] Sonnet - "Hiroshima" - Finalish Draft

[Jackie Williams]

Bill,
I think this a really good sonnet, and poem, no matter the form
I like it when sonnets grapple with ugly subjects rather than always love,
spring, or roses.
You have captured the horror, and the scene behind the reasons why.

Jackie Lee

Time is the school in which we learn.
Time is the fire in which we burn.
Delmore Schwartz	 

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of William L
Houts via stylist
Sent: Friday, August 14, 2015 10:28 AM
To: Writer's Division Mailing List
Cc: William L Houts
Subject: [stylist] Sonnet - "Hiroshima" - Finalish Draft



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?"

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