August 1945

Prometheus is weeping by a rock

In Hiroshima,

Where there are no flowers

Except the black ones the children drew

and were.

From dying nipples

They sucked a blistered milk,

And they died;

Ovened in their mother’s life.

And they died.

Those whom the silence and the heat surprised

Could not cry;

But the fiery air was still humid,

Tumid even, with tears.

I know the Titan is sorrier now he ever stole fire for us.

But

The rock was a cold thing

Far from the petrified shadows of this sooted place.

And the rock, in its ice, said, “Nagasaki.”

Harold Buckley