Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

2.113

They're not ready in Tokyo. Defense
For them was offense, then a line of islands
Defended to the death, and now they're gone,
And we're within range with nothing much done
By the Japanese for civil defense,
Slit trenches and foxholes instead of shelters
And fire-fighting forces that couldn't douse
A lit book of matches, and an over-built
City made of wood, where the population
Is at 140,000 people
Per square mile in the part where we mean to bomb.

2.114

They're loaded gingerly, the Superforts,
Since fire-bombs are fickle and six tons of them
Per plane makes a messy sort of mishap.
They brief the crews who each and all complain
About the height and guns but orders remain
Orders, so they listen, then head to their planes
And board and run checklists and then they roll
Down the runways, lift up, and fly off, skimming
Over the wave tops to favor the engines,
Which still run hot but run cooler down low,
Then the next, then the next, then the next, until
They're gone; LeMay leaves the tower, all alone,
Back to quarters. For now he's superfluous.

 2.115

It's a long dull flight taking up blank hours
Over featureless water during which,
At some point, undetermined, the Superforts
Cross a Rubicon for us, as we rejoin

The human race, which went off to total war,
Which we're waging now, unexceptional
At last, as our Boeings don't turn back, ready,
Willing and able to napalm Japan.

2.116

It's the small touches that make for inferno.
The pathfinder Boeings now head on in,
Precisely strewing M-47's,
Which with 70 pounds of napalm set
Fires too big for them to quench. They scorch an X
Of fire across miles of Tokyo and
X marks the spot as the others fly in
At six thousand feet, dispensing millions
Of M-69's, which break their way in
And burrow just inside the rooftops, where
The nose-fuse strikes wood, which makes it ignite,
As the napalm sputs out from the tail and then
Lands and adheres and catches on fire,
And this keeps up for about four hours
Till they head back to base, bombs gone, crews sucking
Oxygen. They could smell the flesh as it burned.
 

2.117

It's closer to an act of God. The fires
Join up as the wind picks up from the west,
So instead of firestorm, Tokyo suffers
Fire-sweep, in which a tidal wave of fire
Pushes its wall across the city till
It can't burn anymore. It sparks thermals
That bounce the Boeings up into the air
For thousands of feet, then they plunge, control
Coming back to the pilots only with effort,
As they pull out, turn to sea, and, heading home,
The crews look down where along the fire-front,
It's white like an arc lamp; behind it's all red.

 2.118

LeMay keeps watching the clock, he's worried
About his boys, whom, this time, he couldn't lead
From the front; he's grounded on highest orders
Since he knows too much and can't risk capture,

So he sits, sweating if he got it right
About the fighters and flak. For all he knows,
Most of his Boeings might not make it back,
Since down that low they're sitting ducks: disarmed,

But the fighters don't show that night and the fire
Sweeps over the flak, whose crews serve their guns
Till the fire-front takes them; they bag fourteen
Boeings but he's sent three hundred twenty-five,

So the bloodbath's theirs, not ours. On the ground,
It's Hamburg times 2 to the umpteenth power,
Since it's wood meeting napalm whipped up by wind,
So the fires here move while a firestorm sits

Still, where it burns whatever it can, which
This fire-front does too but it then sweeps on
Till it can't burn, taking 10,000 acres.
The survivors mainly remember the screaming.
 

2.119

They died like the Germans died at Dresden, who
Died like their countrymen at Hamburg, who
Died like the English in London's East End,
Since fire-bombs don't ask for passports but then,
Each time's a little worse for those on the ground,
As it gets more total. This time they found
The same fire-shrunk bodies, most often mothers
With their babies, caught out in the night's oven,
Or found them slightly pink, if they happened to
Boil in canals, or found them still intact,
Mouths open: those died from suffocation
Or heat. Not 40,000, as at Hamburg,
But 100,000 to a quarter of
A million dead that night; no one knows
Exactly how many, and this too repeats.

2.120

On March 9th/10th, Tokyo burns. LeMay
Likes what he gets, so he does it again,
His Fire Blitz, over Nagoya, and then
Over Osaka, and then again over
Kobe, where M-69's start to run low,
So they bomb with M-50's and also with
500 pound M-76's and
Most of the rest of the M-47's
And then they go back to Nagoya, which,
Uniquely, still resists incineration,
But by now the fire-bombs are all gone
At the dumps in Saipan, so we send for more,
Then turn our efforts to support our boys
Off Okinawa, where their green pilots
Support their army that's dug in to die
By hurling old planes at our ships, sinking
Some, crippling more, enraging us, who don't
Approve of suicide-bombers. We want
It simply to end and extermination
Is within our grasp: the M-69's
Are on ship, in the pipeline, heading out
But aren't there yet so the B-29's
Beat up airfields with blast, hoping to find
Kamikazes, which we miss. LeMay marks time.

 2.121

It's the Good War. Our Air Force controls the spin.
At Tokyo, we bombed precisely, going in
Not after civilians but for targets there,
Such as feeder factories, camouflaged
In the family homes, where all that's left
Are the drill-presses that the families ran
To feed parts to the factories, or we bombed
Not people but their city because we bomb
Precisely, aiming at specific targets,
And we don't go in for killing civilians,
And so forth, and so on, but, by now, we do.