Everything That Follows: Tsutomu Yamaguchi
Unsteady of tongue, I can only tell you
the told. How a little boy on the trolley
in Hiroshima, not a boy but a whirligig
ignited himself, the air, the light. Everything
that followed followed. Ruptured
eardrum. Burned skin. All the way home
I had to forget so many things. But my
tongue, it couldn’t stop remembering.
I told a man many spindles wide
what had happened. And then it happened
again, in Nagasaki: unblinkered light spilling
from the fat man, across the room
down the staircase, past the last threshold.
Into brain and bone. That same poison light
fouling everything that followed.
Once again I survived, in tongue
and told. Blame Anteros. Blame Eros.
Blame my soiled daughter
who says I carry the poison.
To wife. To son and daughter.
Now you. Who feed your ear
and pass the music on.
(Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived the atomic bombings of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.)
Bio: John Bradley is the author of six books of poetry and prose, his most recent And Thereby Everything (Longhouse). He teaches at Northern Illinois University.