See it. The hot gasses push the cylinder of steel
Into the breathless starry sky
Until it falls, oh Lucifer,
Bearer of merciless light
Arjuna's final arrow
The heavy arm of God
Kyrie eleison
Why hast thou forsaken me?
It spins down lazily, through wisps of cloud
An omen of the sacrifice
The burnt offering.
Even now, the tip draws nigh
As if it seeks the fertile earth
To feel the peace bequeathed
When the steel was sheathed in soil
And the Metal slumbered as ore.
Too late! Not all the works nor wills of Man
Can now avert the moment. See it.
The picture seems to freeze in mockery
As time splits hairs
And the eye of a needle is much too wide
For all of the camel to fit inside.
The stitch is dropped, the nine are lost
And those beneath must pay the cost.
See it! The light
First in a fragment,
Shining through the steel
Glowing translucent
Like a lampshade, lit within.
Beautiful skin that none have seen!
In colors of the brightest sheen
But for a instant see it there
The bomb is a thing of beauty.
See it! The light
Shines ever brighter
As the fire consumes the core
Brings release in fervent moment
To the mega-tonic store
Of energy to light the night
Brighter ever than the day
Blindingly, it steals the sight.
Like a wave of adament
It builds a wall of air like iron,
That marches, stately, from the nave
Out to the final sacrament.
What it touches must decay;
Ten thousand years in a single day
(Or single second) pass away
And leave behind the singing dust
Of concrete buildings, men and rust
Of hopes and dreams and tender lust
Swirling smoke in fallen sun
Surrounding blast that's just begun.
We pause to note the finer flaws.
See the woman and her laughing child;
Her gentle face is filled with love
The babe is joyful innocence
Frozen by the flashing strobe
And caressed by cruel glove
Stroked by razor edge of blaze.
Oh, obscenity.
Observe the cusp that traces out
The needle sharp advance,
Creeps across their soft-wrought form
Slowed by analytic pen.
Blood still pulses in the vein
And the face reveals no pain
As relentless sphere of infinite flame
Burns them away to glowing gas
Faster than the frantic nerve can fire.
Now they are gone, embraced by it.
Imagine now what stormy seas and unknown lands
A gentle soul must surely tread
When from its life it is cruelly wrenched
So fast that no blood was bled,
No pain was felt, no anguished moment;
No chance to sense the sands of time had passed
And the moment, come at last
To doff the body, don the spirit
And shifted through a savored moment,
Pass in stately revenue
From this world to the next.
The horror of the text reveals
The unique death the bomb has bought
To die before you know the death;
To pass before the dying's sought.
Better to die by cruel design,
Bled by bitter savage shark,
And face the lonely moment
In the dark and awful ocean
To find the peace of acquiescence
Then to die in milliseconds
Face still full of bliss
While the Idiot looks on and laughs
With drool on his chin,
And the soul begin
A voyage lost, with no bags
Packed nor address for mail,
Cast into the void so
Rapidly, that even God must weep
To sooth the soul
So it can sleep
Untroubled by the nightmare fears
Of a death undied since Nagasaki
A death in the nuclear fire.
Can we blame Prometheans?
Is it Gods who angered us?
Or was our suicidal pact
Of MADness all that caused the act
That brought about the heresy
The quintessential blasphemy
The final question:
Answer me.
Who shall sing, when Man is gone?
Gone.