Nagasaki Days

I — A Pleasant Afternoon
for Michael Brownstein and Dick

One day 3 poets and 60 ears sat under a green-striped Chau-
tauqua tent in Auroralistening to Black spirituals, tapping their feet, appreciating
words singing by in mountain windson a pleasant sunny day of rest — the wild wind blew thru
blue Heavensfilled with fluffy clouds stretched from Central City to Rocky
Flats,

Plutonium sizzled in its secret bed,
hot dogs sizzled in the Lion's Club lunchwagon microwave
mouth, orangeade bubbled over in waxen

Traffic moved along Colefax, meditators silent in the Diamond
Castle shrine-room at Boulder followed the breath going
out of their nostrils,

Nobody could remember anything, spirits flew out of mouths
& noses, out of the sky, across Colorado plains & the
tent flapped happily open spacious & didn't fall down.
June 18,

II — Peace

Cumulus clouds float across blue sky
over the white-walled Rockwell Corporation factory
— am I going to stop that?
Rocky Mountains rising behind us
Denver shining in morning light— Led away from the crowd by police and photographers
Middleaged Ginsberg and Ellsberg taken down the road
to the greyhaired Sheriff's van — But what about Einstein?

What about Einstein?

Hey,

Einstein
Come back!

II — Golden

Waiting for the Judge, breathing silent
Prisoners, witnesses,

Police — the stenographer yawns into her palms.
August 9,

IV — Everybody's FantasyI walked outside & the bomb'd
dropped lots of plutonium
all over the Lower East

There weren't any buildings left just
iron skeletonsgroceries burned, potholes open to
stinking sewer

There were people starving and crawling
across the desertthe Martian

Os with blue
Light destroyer rayspassed over and dried up all the

Charred Amazon palmtrees for
hundreds of miles on both sides
of the river
August 10, 1978V — Waiting Room at the Rocky Flats Plutonium Plant"Give us the weapons we need to protect ourselves!"
the bareheaded guard lifts his flyswatter above the desk
— whap!
*A green-letter'd shield on the pressboard wall!
"Life is fragile. Handle with care" —My Goodness! here's where they make the nuclear bomb
triggers.
August 17,

VI — Numbers in Red Notebook2,000,000 killed in Vietnam13,000,000 refugees in Indochina 1972200,000,000 years for the Galaxy to revolve on its core24,000 the Babylonian Great Year24,000 half life of plutonium2,000 the most I ever got for a poetry reading80,000 dolphins killed in the dragnet4,000,000,000 years earth been born
Summer 1978