Paul Matthews
bomb-song
A footprint gathers the dark
desiring substance London roars
30 miles away traffic or blood
troubling these Sussex fields
0 Einstein Oppenheimer your lovely child
broods over me as I wash for sleep
Love's task -
to crack the atom crack the boundaries
that Christ should come with halleluja
on the mushroom cloud Don't laugh
Oppenheimer seeing the first flash
at Alamagordo thought on the Lord Krishna
Hitler in secret rooms
encountered a New Man -'intrepid
and cruel' - he was afraid of him
Tap water laughs and peals
Submarines glide under polar ice
alive with death what centre
do we touch in sleep? for surely
there are powers enfolded there
liver and spleen
Uranium in the brain's dark mesh
My bed's a pit Messerschmidt
gave my blood its rhythm
quick with love a flicker of limbs
and ashes
Grass was my first love the smell
of it cut lying in heaps thrown high
in the park - it tumbled like water
My father weeping in fields of Germany
Nagasaki brought me to birth
Michaelmas daisies shed a brilliance
in at my window saying "be glad"
let the cannons bow
desiring substance London roars
30 miles away traffic or blood
troubling these Sussex fields
0 Einstein Oppenheimer your lovely child
broods over me as I wash for sleep
Love's task -
to crack the atom crack the boundaries
that Christ should come with halleluja
on the mushroom cloud Don't laugh
Oppenheimer seeing the first flash
at Alamagordo thought on the Lord Krishna
Hitler in secret rooms
encountered a New Man -'intrepid
and cruel' - he was afraid of him
Tap water laughs and peals
Submarines glide under polar ice
alive with death what centre
do we touch in sleep? for surely
there are powers enfolded there
liver and spleen
Uranium in the brain's dark mesh
My bed's a pit Messerschmidt
gave my blood its rhythm
quick with love a flicker of limbs
and ashes
Grass was my first love the smell
of it cut lying in heaps thrown high
in the park - it tumbled like water
My father weeping in fields of Germany
Nagasaki brought me to birth
Michaelmas daisies shed a brilliance
in at my window saying "be glad"
let the cannons bow
Page(s) 9
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- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
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