At the Peace Park today,
we followed the crowds around the museum,
absorbing the poems,
the photos, the pain, from the bombs
dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Then sat numbly in the
downstairs chairs,
before trudging down the peace walk
to the Bomb Dome,
a mangled heat-melted wreck of a building.

Rooted at the memorial
to Sadako, we felt the flutter of
a thousand futile cranes
brush our cheeks like tears.

Susan Howard

Listen to Susan reading ‘Hiroshima’ (0:33).

 

Susan Howard is a poet and playwright living in a small town north of Auckland, New Zealand. She has been published in Takahē, The Blue Nib, Shot Glass Journal, Poems in the Waiting Room, a fine line, and Poems in a Mirror.

© text and audio 2020