Hiroshima Day

This is the first of three poems related to one topic: Hiroshima. Sad to say,
they are still current politics.

"Memory
 is where the past and
 future meet."
		     Mayor Takahashi Hiraoka of Hiroshima, 
		       quoted in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 8/5/95,
			   presumably not intended as a haiku.

What means this new holocaust?
     "Brighter than a thousand suns" ... is this a sign?

Murder is no news,
     nor yet slaughtering a people,
     		which we now name "genocide". 
Conquerors long ago made towers out of skulls.
     Rulers have slain and sown salt.
Societies have had their canaries - Jews, gypsies, witches - 
     Scapegoats to die and give warning.

"Strategic" war is no news.
	where "civilians" are the intended targets.
Fewer people died in Hiroshima
	than when we firebombed Dresden with "conventional" weapons.

But this pillar of fire
     is the gate of a new age, 
     		offering
A technocracy of death.

Now we have the solution
     to disobedience, to differences,
     		to all frustrations and complexities.
Now we have the Final Solution.
     Now all can die.

In the nuclear age we are all targets, all gypsies, all queers,
all Jews.

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