No planes are flying west
but I’ve flown east
– despite armed guards at Heathrow
rumours and delays
(I surrender scissors whilst
a teenager worries
about unwashed underwear) –
east to where Enola Gay
dropped Little Boy.
By bullet train to
parties of Australian schoolchildren
envelop the statue of a little girl
holding aloft a golden crane
with rainbow coloured garlands –
Sedako’s medicine papers reborn
as cranes. Her goal
to fold one thousand
then she would be well again.
We tour the museum – taste the charred remains
in a child’s lunch-box – cleanse ourselves with iced coffee.
Under the shadow of the A-Bomb Dome, we watch
cranes dip down into the once black river – rise – and fly away.
‘I will write Peace on your wings and you will fly all over the world.'
(Sadako Sasaki 1943-55)
Copyright Carole Alexander, published by the Forward Press 2008.
4 comments:
Hard hitting but necessary.
irrationality
After Hiroshima we have a new kind of global warfare.
This is powerful and I really appreciate the layers of meaning throughout it. Wonderful stuff!
Yeah, Lest we forget!
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