The Aioi Bridge

It was my gruffy-voiced History teacher—

Caught in the moment of inscrutable academic flair—

Who concluded his lesson of World War II

By stating that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Ended the war.

He said they were atomic bombs.

Said the U.S. sent a bomb to Hiroshima

Boom!

Then sent a bomb to Nagasaki

Boom!

And more than 150,000 people DIED!

Just like that.

Poof! Gone!

Just like that.

And my History teacher,  in a stance of disinterested bystander

Said these things.

Said them like it was some idle talk on way to the market place.

May be it was the hot afternoon that numbed his senses.

May be it was because of his repeated teachings

That made his shock blunt.

May be....May be...

What my History teacher never knew

Was that that day, I went to our school dormitory

And properly mourned such a calamity.

I thought it was proper to whisper into the darkness

To all those 150,000 plus people and say,

“O Departed Souls, what madness drove me, a fellow human,

To kill you in so cruel a way?

What shall I tell my heart now that I have cruelly killed

By burning the fresh buds that sprouted?”

And I wept into the night

And when a friend overheard me,

Concerned, he asked

To which, in-between sobs

I said that I was mourning Hiroshima and Nagasaki

To which my friend responded,

“That is History! That is the past. You are being over-sensitive!”

I felt offended.

I felt offended because he thought I was not being normal.

I wept more.

My History teacher probably never saw the picture of Hiroshima before 6th August 1945

When it was bombed.

For if he did, I would have felt the tear in his voice.

O! Hiroshima was so full of life; it went about her business;

Like elands on the savannah, Hiroshima enchanted.

See Hiroshima! See Hiroshima in her full spleandour!

See her peoples! More than 90,000 alive, just breathing!

Now see Hiroshima! See the billow of smoke! See the pandemonium!

See the cloud of destruction! See death now! See the 90,000 cindered!

See the eland as small ash, not even the horns spared.

Of course that is history. It is the past, you know.

After I had mourned Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

On the next day, I drew a picture of an eland by the Aioi Bridge

I thought that it was befitting tribute to the departed souls

Because the eland in her beauty would always remind us

Of the beauty of our souls.

The Aioi Bridge is our bridge to everlasting peace.

I hang this picture on my bed to remind myself

To look at the Aioi Bridge.

It is the bridge to find me, to find my peace.


C) Salem Lorot/ echoesofthehills 2014

In response to a prompt by Poet's United 

Midweek Motif ~ Hiroshimaor Ring a Bell