On July 16 in 1945, the first atomic bomb was detonated near Alamogordo, and a few weeks later was dropped on Japan on August 6
The bomb that blasted
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
And scarred the whole world
Exploded unbeknown to me
No adult thought to tell a child
That we could all now
Be destroyed
In the twinkling of an eye
No-one mentioned
That man had become
The shatterer of worlds.
The savants of the western world
Toiled in the dusty desert
To create fission
They even feared
Would conflagrate our world.
Playing at being gods
Not in white coats and sterile labs
But in dust and heat
Stripped to the waist
In a home-made tent
Rigged up at the foot of a puerile tower
Invented to try to reduce
Unknown quantities of fall-out
In the first attempt
To detonate an atom bomb.
The core was carried in a valise
In the back seat of a car
And driven over a bumpy road
To where eight scientists
Waited at base camp
To assemble the plutonium pieces
In silence with their own lives in the balance
Eight men worked in deepest concentration.
The murderous device now ready
It was carried on a stretcher
To the car
And continued its journey
To the tent in the desert
Beneath the searing sun
Where the final team of scientists
Waited in the dim cool shelter.
The core was hoisted manually
Before being lowered into the waiting bomb
The only sound
The ticking Geiger counters
Occasionally an instruction
And then the monster
Was winched by hand
To the top of the shoddy tower
And a pile of mattresses
Twenty feet high
Placed beneath
In case it fell!
A hundred feet above the desert
In a strong wind
The brutish metal sphere
Covered with leads
Connecting sixty-four detonators
Swung in the rain and thunder
Waiting for zero hour.
And when it came
In the blackness of night
The darkness turned to light
A blazing sun glared on the horizon
Lighting up the desert
And a slow roar of sound
Rolled across the land.
As the fireball
Raced into the sky
They watched from a bunker
And some wept
Some laughed
Some were silent
One had goose pimples
As the world changed forever.
In this cumbersome
And homely way
Using mattresses and suitcases
The sweat of their brows
A temporary tent and teamwork
The greatest terror
The world had known
Came into being.
And this gives me heart.
Mere men, in their own
Unskilled and make-shift way
Can re-create with gentleness and patience
The new world
That we all ache for.
Our puny efforts are worthwhile
For God wastes nothing.
More Food for Thought
If it is to be, it is up to me. Advice for life for his boys, from an anonymous English schoolmaster
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