A Candle in August Hiroshima/Nagasaki August 6/9, 2015 - Dorian Brooks

A Candle in August
Hiroshima / Nagasaki
August 6 / 9, 2015

If I float a candle

over decades of distance

will it help us remember

two girls skipping and laughing

on their way to school

when the bomb fell then

two shadows on a wall

If I float a candle

will we picture in our minds

the blasted cities

people running burning

screaming into the river

thousands

and thousands dead

Will we not shy away

from photos of scorched skin

sloughing off hair falling out

in handfuls

blood and vomit

everywhere wounds oddly

lingering not healing

Will we mouth the words

of our generals and leaders

and know the taste of ash:

“We have to do this

in order to save lives.”

“No they may not surrender

and keep their emperor.”

“No we cannot warn them

with a demo bomb.”

“We will do all we can

to avoid killing civilians.”

“This is the greatest thing

in history.”

If we each float a candle

on memory’s dark river

will we keep the promise

borne now seventy years

on wind in summer trees—

never, never again

and will that river be

a river of peace

—Dorian Brooks © 2015

The 70th Anniversary of the Hiroshima & Nagasaki A-bombings: Contradictions, Dangers and Opportunities - Joseph Gerson, Ph.D.

Excerpted from Dr. Joseph Gerson's address at the World Conference against A and H Bombs in Hiroshima, Japan on August 2, 2015

See the full text: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/07/31/our-70th-anniversary-homework-confronting-myths-and-learning-lessons-hiroshima-and

Friends, I am honored to return to the World Conference on this anniversary of the criminal and indiscriminate A-bombings.

With the development and use of nuclear weapons, humankind crossed the threshold in which all life is held hostage to those willing to inflict genocide, possibly omnicide, to protect their power and privilege. Since then, we’ve been more than lucky to survive nuclear blackmail, reckless dependence on deterrence, miscalculations and nuclear accidents.

Hibakusha, who have channeled their excruciating physical and emotional pain into the most powerful force for the abolition of these weapons of mass murder courageously warn us that human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist. And the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, like the poet Toge, instructs us to remember our humanity and forget the rest.

Noam Chomsky Statement

Seventy years ago, humanity entered a new era with the realization that civilization has advanced (or more accurately descended) to the stage where we have achieved the capacity to destroy ourselves, instantaneously. Since then, we have marched resolutely towards that goal in ways so shocking that it hard to find words to describe them. And from the first moments, when US policy makers literally did not even consider the possibility of an international agreement, which might have been feasible, to bar development of the one major threat to American security, ICBMs with nuclear warheads, a failure that provides startling insight into the thinking of those who hold the fate of the world in their hands.

A review of the history of reckless acts of political leaders and their callous disregard for horrendous consequences, accidents that came ominously close to terminal war, the understanding that a first strike would devastate the perpetrator and everyone else… all of this should leave a rational observer almost speechless. One can easily appreciate the retrospective judgment of the former head of the US Strategic Command, General Lee Butler, that we have so far survived the nuclear age “by some combination of skill, luck, and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion.” And no less the haunting question he raises: “By what authority do succeeding generations of leaders in the nuclear-weapons states usurp the power to dictate the odds of continued life on our planet? Most urgently, why does such breathtaking audacity persist at a moment when we should stand trembling in the face of our folly and united in our commitment to abolish its most deadly manifestations?”