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About The North Coast times-eagle. (Wheeler, Oregon) 1971-2007 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 1, 2005)
PAG E 8 N O R T H C O A S T T IM E S E A G L E , AUGTEMBER 2005 POETRY I TRY TO EXPLAIN TO MY CHILDREN A NEWSPAPER ARTICLE WHICH SAYS THAT ACCORDING TO A COMPUTER A NUCLEAR WAR IS LIKELY TO OCCUR IN THE NEXT 20 YEARS Death (I say) used to have two faces — one good, one bad. The good death didn’t like to do it, Kill people, dogs, insects, flowers, But had to do it. It was his duty. He would rather have been playing cards. Without him the earth would get too crowded, The soil would become tired, feuds would Overtake love. That was what death Believed — and when we thought about it We agreed. The bad death was a bully. He would kill angels if he could. He settled for children, poets, All flesh increased by spirit. He bragged and made bets and said Disparaging things about the human race. People made his job easy, he said. They were full of a confusion that Soon became hatred. He would shake His head in wonder, but he understood. The nations of the world offered him Their love. The new death doesn’t Have a face. He will kill us but In the meantime he wants to kill life too. He is calm, devoted, gradual. He is crazy. The other two deaths Do not like him, the way he wears A tie as if death were an office, The way he wants to be efficient. Fate and fortune bore him. He has Reasons. There cannot be enough death, He says. You will put us out of business, The other two say, but he doesn’t listen. Things seem the same, my children, but They aren’t. Now the sun has come to earth, shrouded in a mushroom cloud of death. -K A T E WOLFE I WOULD BE A WITNESS FOR HIROSHIMA It was August 6th in 1945, At an early hour of the day; Men and women were to start their daily work, When unexpectedly The city and all were blown away; Blistered hideously, each and all; The seven rivers were filled with naked corpses. Supposing there is a tale of the inferno Which a man caught a glimpse of once, And happens to warn me of its horror To be called back by the lord of the inferno, The moment he tells it to someone else, I would go wherever it is, as a witness of the Hiroshima Tragedy, That I might proclaim its misery; I would sing for my life “No more wars on the earth!” -SADAKO KURIHARA PAPER CRANES Radiated into the consciousness of thousands August 6 will be remembered The atomic agony of Hiroshima staged in silent stillness of burned flesh and radiation puking and hairless nakedness The incredible heat that burned friends into concrete walls, also photographed shirts onto backs, chests and stomachs. In quiet hunger and thirst the desperate survivors could not count their dead And, yes, there were no apologies The United States sent scientists, engineers, to assess and measure the damage American grandchildren have not forgotten that our government ended the war and saved thousands of lives In our inherited guilt, we, too, have seen the arbitrary callousness And our Japanese brothers cannot forget their opportunity for first-hand observation, the chance to study the atomic particle as it eats, still insidiously, into the bones and skin and hearts of the survivors as they fold paper cranes -K A Y HILGENBERG Portrait of political process the top-level negotiators drunk at the whorehouse in Geneva • Fail Geese Passing Overhead. Nothing Like Tomahawks Or Cruise Missile Guidance Systems Finding Their Way Home. But Wait, More Hatred Grows With Each Explosion. -E. A. ANDERSON You will be held responsible for anything on the blackboard: last gasp earth terror flash hydrogen blast a false quickening left to fester slowly giving death’s head ugly reality while sins left undone seed the galaxy -LLO Y D K. MARBET HISTORY LESSON Class, I must apologize for the film we are about to see. If you would like to be excused, I will give you a pass to the library. If you have a weak stomach, you may wish to be excused. (I cannot be held responsible for any sudden loss of innocence.) I cannot be held responsible after the rain, or when the skin slips off like a glove, or when you see the person without a mouth. TILLAMOOK AIR MUSEUM write 50,000 dead instantly, within 10 miles of center. 100,000 died later, within 50 miles of center. Today’s bombs: 200,000 x Hiroshima, Nagasaki. (And you will be held responsible for the knowledge.) -GERALDINE HELEN FOOTE -E . A. ANDERSON JULIE & VJ DAY You might have been named Victoria Jane You knew a girl who was Poor girl, you said You are 60 VJ day the day you were bom the World W ar ended Millions dead gone Nevermore forever You are new life born amidst burial a sad world you make warm You unconditional mother You wonderful woman I love you always -M P M c -JO N POST EYE FOR AN EYE ARMS RACE I wish as a survivor, To be a real human being; Besides as a poor mother, Fearing a day when the blue sky Above the red-cheeked children And those thousands with promising futures May be smashed to atoms all of a sudden, Endangering their bright futures And now, to be repeated at the nation’s cost. I resolved to shed tears supposedly to be shed on dead bodies, Afresh for those people living now, Declaring against all war, first of all. Even if I should perchance be punished under a disgraceful name — From a mother’s protest against death for her own son’s sake, I should never dare to hide myself, never! Because the day was too much impressed on my retina, The hellish day of that fatal blaze Portrait of death a tactical target the blasted city footprints of Mars nine million dead a trillion dollar <oss Portrait of abstract beauty laser-carved rubble-sculpture crushed cars on asphalt and that mineral of bones & glass rock and vaporized steel: Hiroshimite -BAR O N WORMSER nuclear balance slowing pendulum swing to where zerotime awaits the final touch of a madman who would cut the hair of Damocles’ sword CITY KILLER The behemoth beckoned for eons dwarfing cows in pacific pastures until I came to pay for a neck-craning view of the vault. Zeppelins extinct, the hanger is home now to scores of war birds gaily arrayed in rows with legends. Winter chill invades when I encounter a companion of old, Angst of enemy air raids. First words of the child at war: Mutti, Tata, Bombalarm. No sleep is safe from the wailing of sirens, struggles with buttons and shoelaces, staccato of running feet. From my blanket cocoon I mark the migration by tunnel lights overhead. Heavy tread wears down the stone steps to the Bunker where my mother pitches her songs against the rumble and roar of planes waxing and waning in black-out skies. I leam my lullabies to rocking walls and a basso continuo of fear. There is no nostalgia in war if you have ever been bombed -KAR EN TEMPLE
