Mongered to each other about prospects,
Of this cold world splintering into two,
One painted red and the other true blue,
The agency of the atom pointed to,
The scattered islands of the indigo Pacific,
For the salvation of the greatest nation,
Ever to pillage and plunder nature.
Sparkling lagoons and atolls and reefs,
Local folks who moved in tears and grief,
To north and south and thither of the test,
Or wherever the uniform said was best,
The people of Marshall Islands banished to,
Promised lands to end the world of wars,
And witness the lumiere spectacle from shacks,
In disintegrating skins and radioactive hats.
To frighten the red enemy with heavy artillery,
Bomb clergy without the benefit of clarity,
Conjured fissions and fusions from Limbo,
Christening them Abel, Baker and Bravo,
Who lit up the skies and spread the ashes,
Far and between the spans of the planet,
Only to settle down and seep into those,
All that breathes and all that is born.
All that breathes and all that is born.
Yet the agency of the atom never much worried,
Whether these isotopes would remain tethered,
Only to the blackened sands and half-lifed hearts,
Of the locals both in rags and in uniforms,
Nor in their wildest visions did they imagine,
That planetary winds would carry this sewage,
Into the streets and curbs of Buffalo, New York,
And a child's dead bones in sunny Singapore.
Of the tragic cover-up and research that ensued,
On global circulation and deposition of radionuclides,
Or of the thousands of corpses bodysnatched for studies,
For the contamination of calcium by Iodine-131,
Or on the millions of clouds forewarned of residue,
Making billions of tonnes of food squandered away,
And shipped off to the third-world for half a penny,
One could write something yet remain a dummy.
The odyssey of Strontium-90 is a melancholic tale,
Of an unknown unknown making itself heard,
As it surged through the food chains and rivers,
Into the bowels of civilization caught unawares,
And as it bellowed out loud CANCER and DEATH,
Amidst pronouncements to renounce milk and sugar,
By officials who had endangered all of life itself,
The Earth still spun on its axis - still blue and pale.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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