Thursday 9 August 2007

Ninth day of August

to emptiness
somewhere beyond
any hope of an edge
touching hesitant
with strangeness
the noisesome silences

moving outwards
the lengths of a wasteland
crawled
just the thunder
of their making
disturbing the quiet
of their insanity

ceasing all function
dead eyes stare
ten-thousand years
as black grains settle

bleached sky
level ground
heat of sun
aimless scintillae
dancing
indolent
a beetle scuttles unaware
before
their crime
blooms
inane in its conception
empty
inaccessible
carving its violence
through time

and
watching
from their distant hillside
the architects
silent
motionless
locked forever to their perversion
the twisted vision
from which we are no longer free

brighter than a thousand suns

no longer
a dream
this nightmare

5 comments:

Papoosue said...

Wonderful Graeme. Hiroshima?

Charlie Cornelius said...

This was originally titled 16.7.1945 and was written about the first nuclear weapon test in the US. Having posted a poem for Hiroshima, I thought it appropriate to add this for Nagasaki.

Papoosue said...

Yes Graeme, I meant to post this message in the previous post - sorry. Both your poems are very moving, thank you.

john said...

very moving poem, it leaves you silent after you've read it.

Charlie Cornelius said...

Thanks John.