Poem about the atomic bomb?

Question

My husband has been trying to find this poem for years.. all he can remember is he thinks its called the Ballard of Major Earthly or something similar. It's about the dropping of the atomic bomb. Can any one help please? Cheers!

Answer 1

POEMS BY ATOMIC BOMB SURVIVORS

From Nihon genbaku shishu
Umeboshi *
Ikeda Some
Oh yes, at that moment, what shall I say,
together with the glass case in the dining room
I tumbled
Rumble rumble each time it shook
I squeezed out to the top of the roof.
Squeezed out?--there was no way I could get myself out
I was helped out I suppose
by the gods or by the Buddha.
Oh what distress what pain
I wish I'd breathed my last quickly
then I'd be able to go to the other world, I thought.
It was on the morning of the third day
that someone put an umeboshi in my mouth.
"This old woman's dead, alas
poor woman
____________________
* Pickled plum.
-117-
namu Amidha namu Amidha,"
he stroked my face.
"I'm alive I'm alive," I said
then he kindly dropped
a big umeboshi in my mouth.
This thing umeboshi is a good thing.
It was thanks to that umeboshi
that I grew stronger.
City in Flames
Nakamura On
Under a pale blue glow, the black sun,
dead sunflowers, and a collapsed roof,
people lifted their faces voicelessly:
bloody eyes that exchanged looks then
loosely peeling skin
lips swollen like eggplants
heads impaled with shards of glass--
"how can this be a human face"
everybody thought at the sight of another
yet each who so thought had the same face.
Flames soon wrapped the city
at one house there were only a mother and a seven-year-old girl
crushed under the roof the mother could not move
the girl alone survived
while the girl was trying to move a pillar
the flames came there too
"run by yourself"
the mother, with her free arm,
pushed the child away.
Without even uttering a cry of horror
toward a place without flames
-118-
from the west and from the east
naked figures their skin loosely peeling
you couldn't tell men from women
a procession of ghosts continued;
in the middle of all this
suddenly
an old woman in the procession stopped
pulling in something like a sash that was coming off
when the flames had already come so close!
Someone, unable to take it any longer, said
"come, throw that away, let's hurry"
then she answered
"these are my intestines."
A Skinless Throng
Yamamoto Yasuo
In the big shelter at the foot of Mount Hiji
a skinless throng
looking up
or lying face down
or sitting with legs crossed
were crying "give me water"
they were all still alive
their spasmodic cries and groans
filled the air-raid shelter from the farthest dark corner to the exit
like a huge musical instrument
they resounded making a ghastly howl.
My wife and I
carried on a shutter
our dear child, burnt alive, naked
into the naked group.
-119-
Inside the shelter an army doctor was applying oil
on dying people
"For this child, please do something for this child."
This was the first-aid post we had found at last
"Let this child live--"
"Here's another terrible case . . . ,"
the doctor went over the swollen red-black back and legs of the child
with a cloth soused in oil in the pot
when I pointed at the big open wound
left split like a ripe pomegranate
which had shed the last drop of blood
leave it alone, it'll heal itself, look
I have neither medicine nor bandage, the doctor said
as I realized
the doctor himself was naked with burns all over him
my wife and I bowed palms together to the doctor
dirty like an old statue of the Buddha, only his eyes glowing.
Was he going to make it?
again placing him on the shutter
saying "so lucky, so lucky,"
we went back holding it at both ends.
Ah what fools parents are
such cruel burns and
such deep wounds could never be cured.
That night my son
in the debris
of the house blown to pieces in the explosion
lived out the remaining few hours meted out by the atomic bomb
like the flame of a candle burning itself out
"are there yokan cakes in the Pure Land? and
there's no war in the Pure Land, is there . . ."
he muttered
-120-
and twitched his body and breathed the last
of his sweet life of thirteen years and three months.
That army doctor, too, probably died before long
the naked group without skin
crying in the dark shelter
probably all died
cursing mankind's brutality called war. . . .
To the Voiceless
Yamada Kazuko
No matter what you say
it is cruel
already forgotten by everyone
and buried away
are the buddhas
left alone
are the buddhas
no matter what you say
it is cruel
on a night when the moon inclines
come over as ghosts
talk with your mom
let's talk, with our backs turned.
Ten Years
Yamada Kazuko
An incredibly long night and
an incredibly short day and
an incredibly long night and
an incredibly long night and
an incredibly long night and
an incredibly long night and . . .
-121-
Wail
Yamada Kazuko
Oh Shoji
Oh Yasushi
Oh Shoji
Oh Yasushi
Ohh Shoji
Ohh Yasushi
Ohh Shoji my boy
Ohh Yasushi my boy
Shoji my boy
Shoji my boy.
To the Lost
Yamada Kazuko
When loquats bloom
when peach blossoms in the peach mountain bloom
when almonds are as big as the tip of the little finger
my boys
please come.
The Wind
Yamada Kazuko
Knocking on the door of the back entrance
who is it?
koto koto koto koto
shaking the gate in passing
-122-
who is it?
mom's working on a side job at home
3mom's waiting
mom still has your briefs and undershirts.
Floating Lanterns
Kosono Aiko
Flickering flickering
bobbing bobbing
blue lanterns
red lanterns
swaying swaying
they float
to a far place
to the Ten Trillion Lands
they float away
countless numbers of them
a hundred a thousand ten thousand,
many more
continue
floating
it was
long long ago
the dreadful atomic bomb
was dropped on Hiroshima
and many many people
died
in this river
those people today
have come for a visit
from the Ten Trillion Lands to Hiroshima
lighting a red fire
lighting a blue fire
"let's not
ever drop
-123
another such dreadful bomb
be peaceful forever
let's protect Hiroshima
let's protect Japan
let's protect the world
let's protect the cosmos"
rocked by the waves
recalling their distant past
they whisper
flickering flickering
bobbing bobbing
red lanterns
blue lanterns
swaying swaying
they float away
to a far place
to the Ten Trillion Lands
they float away
countless
numbers
a hundred a thousand ten thousand
many more
continue
floating.
Burnt Eye
Shimada Isamu
Again August 9's here
listen, the day your right eye
was smashed is back
the day
your eye, lovely
as a candy
was gouged out
is here
again--
-124-
after your eye was taken
always wearing a white eye patch
you went to school
how angry you must've felt
how mad
how inconvenienced
from time to time
you took off your eye patch
and under the desk
you were stroking your keloid scar
I knew it
I
thought if I said it
you'd cry
so I kept quiet
this year again
your day's here
the day of the pikadon's * here
you were
called a cripple
called a one-eye
you were
reading books with your left eye
your right had been taken by the pika
would you
perhaps wish for a rosary
would you
perhaps wish for the Madonna's necklace
August 9's here
you were six, weren't you
you've become twenty-five
you'd like to marry, wouldn't you.
____________________
* Flash-boom, or the atomic bomb.
-125-
Peace Park/Laughter
Matsuo Shizuaki
Incredible laughter heard
the invisible seen
the forest of horror sitting in the farthest corner of the eye
we quickly covered our white chests, but--
Yoshio who had often played with our Hiroko died that year
The words of Yoshio's mother who came food-hunting for
vegetables gushed out, coated with tears
"On the second day, when poor Hiroko was brought here to
the country
from the burnt windows of City Hall and the Red Cross Hospital
many bones of the dead to which pieces of flesh were still
attached
were thrown out and piled up
that's when Yoshio was dug out from the dirt
without a single scar he was dug out from the dirt
a dozen days later
he cried it hurts it hurts
no matter how and where I touched him he cried
after that neither his ankles nor neck
nor hips could move--he couldn't even lift or lower his arms
they didn't bend
besides have you ever thought of a doll's eyes?
his eyes only saw straight ahead
'how come only I'm this way'
he said, crying with his tearless eyes
with his eyes under eyelids which had lost eyelashes
in the third month Yoshio became a doll
a doll's eyes are open but can't see
why I wonder did the gods keep those unseeing eyes open?
what were those unseeing eyes seeing
yet before he died
he had finally become well enough at least to crawl around
the day he died he
wanted to see his oldest sister who had loved him
-126
crawled from his bed to the yard to see if she might
be coming
he waited single-mindedly for three hours in the cold air
but his sister had died four days earlier of 'medullary leukemia'
if we died, who would care for someone like Yoshio?
my husband and I often prayed
'would that he would die before us'
what parent ever wished that a child would die first?!"
Now from the restaurant across the river a burst of laughter rises
to the night sky
now the fountain powerfully spouting up in the square suddenly
stops.
How much can words sustain space--
when we sit facing fresh laughter again
it becomes an incredible peal, more sharply whetted
and splits us in two
the funnier the laughter, the harder for us to laugh.
The Atomic Bomb *
Sakamoto Hatsumi
When the atomic bomb drops
day turns into night
people turn into ghosts.
Untitled
Tanoo Kinue
After the bomb dropped
mom says
boiling rice she has carefully saved
"what's so fun about
making war"
____________________
* This and the following two poems were composed in 1952 by primary school students.
-127-
she says
"Takashi my son, Takashi my son
please come back healthy"
she cries
making rice balls.
Untitled
Sato Tomoko
Yoshiko
with burns
in bed
said
I want to eat a tomato
so mom
went out food hunting
in the meantime
Yoshiko
died
"by feeding you nothing but sweet potatoes
I've killed you"
mom cried
I too
cried
everybody
cried.
That Guy
Sakamoto Tadashi
Flinging himself back, still clinging to the bed, his protruding Adam's apple convulsing up and down, he groaned, I'll die, I'll die. The two of us grabbed him and held him down, and gave him a morphine shot.
-128
His liver was so poor that his urine specimen turned deep red before our eyes, and, refusing three days to touch his trays prepared without protein and grease, he sulked and sulked saying, I'll starve to death. Shouting vile words at him, at last I gave him a glucose shot.
Having lost his senses from a high fever, he had a grayish dark face. His skin which enclosed 38,000 white cells idly sagging around his eyelids, that guy, ugly as a monkey, from time to time mumbled, you quack. There, there, I said holding him in my arms, and injected Ringer's solution through a staggeringly fat needle into a vein which had risen to the surface.
But one day the guy spewed blood like a fountain of heavy oil, dyeing the sheet even while we watched. As I turned to him in a hurry with a needle for a blood transfusion, he received it meekly and said in a faint whisper, doctor, I want to live, and with that he stopped moving, his eyes open.
Song of the Prime Minister
Okamoto Jun
However much deadly ashes scatter
however much polluted rain falls
whatever scholars say
whatever hubbub the populace makes
the minister's face turns "over there" and greets
--please, please, anything you like.
Beta rays
gamma rays
nebulous radioactive clouds cover the archipelago
fish cattle vegetables trees and grass
all turn into a leaden soggy mass
young and old, men and women turn into sea monsters, even then
the minister leaves it up to those "over there"
--please, please, anything you like.
-129-
Now no woman no man
has a human shape
the islands are shattered fragments of oyster shells
an eroded desert
where bones and ashes dance directionless
the wandering ghost of the minister
is singing somewhere like a marsh cricket
--please, please, anything you like.

Answer 2

Atomic Bomb Poem

Answer 3

With every day pass, our country is getting into more and more trouble. The inflation, unemployment and falling value of dollar are the main concern for our Government but authorities are just sleeping, they don’t want to face the fact. Media is also involve in it, they are force to stop showing the real economic situation to the people. I start getting more concern about my future as well as my family after watching the response of our Government for the people that affected by hurricane Katrina.

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Answer 4

The best way to get back your ex is https://tr.im/Qlwgj

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Answer 5

Always have vegetables on hands. Saute a big bag connected with frozen mixed vegetables in coconut oil and garlic. Add some red pepper as well as turmeric for additional flavor as well as separate into portion-sized containers with the fridge.

Answer 6

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Answer 7

Thank you for this question Molehunter. I dropped in quite by accident and found myself engrossed reading J Charles answer. They're poems I have never come across before. It's heart-rending stuff!

Answer 8

"Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Russian Roulette", by Moving Hearts spring to mind. They ostenstibly say that it was good, but in such a way it is not hard to know what they really think (It's a game of Russian Roulette with the World)

Answer 9

If perhaps it's a fruit they have seeds, otherwise it's a vegetable. And vegetables are usually grown in the ground while fruits are grown in trees.

Answer 10

At breakfast, go ahead and beverage orange juice. But throughout other day, focus on water instead of juice or soda

Answer 11

People who regularly weigh themselves and keep an eye on their progress in a journal are more likely to lose weight.