Two Poems by Victoria Barnes
A Cosmic Dirty Story
—from the New York Times, 9 August 1945
From an open door in the sky,
the threshold of a new industrial art.
To the earth, an explosion of red:
the new and terrifying weapon.
In the morning newspaper, images arrive:
an imagination-sweeping experiment.
As we read the story, we learn—
The great bomb … harnesses the power of the universe to destroy the enemy by concussion, blast and fire.
With the fire, we consider our victory:
eminent scientists gathered, frankly fearful to witness the results of the invention, which might turn out to be either the salvation or the Frankenstein’s monster of the world.
In the glory of it all, the flash was pure—
an element of elation in the realization that we had perfected this devastating weapon.
Yet in our blindness an ocean apart, we see no blood.
What has been done … is the greatest achievement of organized science in history.
In reading more, we smell no cinders.
Practically all living things, human and animal, were literally seared to death.
In listening for imagined voices, we hear no calls.
We are more prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely.
In turning away, we relish no victory.
The cruel sight resulting from the attack is so impressive that one cannot distinguish between men and women killed by the fire. The corpses were too numerous to be counted.
In knowing now, we reject our place:
What is this terrible new weapon, which the War Department also calls the ‘Cosmic Bomb’?
Coda:
In knowing now, we reject our place:
How will these righteous-thinking American people feel about the way their war leaders are perpetuating this crime against man and God?
Liberty Island
Give me your cliff
your cloud
your dreamy vision
of birds and fog
and flying
in the whir and whirl
of industry and asphalt
and commuters
in sooty rain—
of mothers and babies
and withered neglect
in malaise maligned—
with searing tears
I lift my lamp
but shut
the golden door.
Victoria Barnes has studied mythology, creative nonfiction, poetry, bookbinding, metaphoric thinking, and a bunch of other seemingly unrelated mishmash. She did not take math past high school, an accomplishment given her too many college degrees. She endeavors in taking photos and writing poetry. Currently she is writing a cycle of poems imagining Amelia Earhart’s thoughts on each airborne leg of her last flight and studying the skies in her travels, especially in the Southwest U.S.
Photo credit: Daniel Horacio Agostini via a Creative Commons license.
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