Feeding the Ghosts of Hiroshima

by Judith Werner

How thin you are,
little mothers and fathers,
still floating above us
like the finest kimonos—
a hundred thousand rainbow silks
rustling in the windy platitudes
of public men.

So many years—your hair has grown back,
long and black as a monkey’s mane,
or twisted in a geisha knot.

Your charred skin blooms again,
the color of bronze chrysanthemums.

You must be hungry for gratitude
that you left this cherry-blossom earth
so we could live in the shadows
of the Statue of Liberty.

All these years, nipping at me,
waiting to fill your bellies
with anyone’s apology,

and here I am, dripping words
like tea from a porcelain cup into
the saucer of white sands between us,

words like the curled pink edges
of tiny sunrises, shrimp crackers
for you to nibble on each year
in your nuclear summer—

August is hot
and August 6th is hotter still.

If only I were Basho,
I might return the sight of the moon
to you, through her veil of clouds,
and the sound of a frog
jumping from a lily pad into the pond.

You might grow sleepy with the perfume
of peonies flowering at noon,
and smile on me after your nap. . .

Being the least of your children,
all I can feed you is words
that still remember you,
a few morsels of delicious grief.

Every August at Nagasaki

by Judith Werner

The sun blinked that August 9th,
500 meters above your skin
of oak and pine and long-lived cedar.
Then the rains came, seeping

into your flesh. As Basho said
much earlier, It has rained enough
to turn the stubble on the field
black.

Fat Man stung you, goddess who turns
in sleep and buries Pompeii,
who shrugs and sinks Atlantis
beneath her wine-dark skirts.

*
Afterwards, we counted humans—
75,000 dead, some vaporized
to chalky outlines on the ground,
some charred and twisted where they fell.

But no one counted your cats,
one moment graceful as a Hiroshige print,
the next turned to elf flames
burning fitfully over the rubble.

No one even saw your raccoon dogs,
those tricksters with their furry pelts,
stopped exactly at 11:20 AM,
furtive in their forest burrows,

or your striped yellow dragonflies
that carry the ancestors home—
their wings winking out like fireflies
in a blast of unexpected dawn.

*

Each year since, I’ve grown heavier
with nightmares of your cuckoos,
your pheasants, your peace-loving cranes,
while you lie dismembered, buried

beneath Nagasaki, that port city
of your worshippers. My elder brothers
rained brimstone there—as afterthought—
while, far away, I walked the fields of your back.

Ah, the summer grasses!
All that remains of the warriors’ dreams.
Though Basho sleeps with so many,
forgive us now and return,

your beautiful, scarred face rising,
lined in lizards, crowned with salamanders,
those lowly, glowing beasts of yours