Poem: The Shadow Of Hiroshima

Shadow on steps of Sumitomo Bank Company, Hiroshima 1945. Photo by US Armed Forces.

Somewhere on a pavement is a shadow of

we know not whom. Someone who survived

just long enough to take the heat when

a flash brighter than a thousand suns

flared in the Hiroshima dawn,

gobbling greedily the oxygen of the early morn

and eliminating the lives, names, hopes of generations

when Oppenheimer's Death, the Destroyer of Worlds, came calling.

Somewhere on our soul is the shadow of

these eighty years of appeasing the Destroyer, fuelling the beast

with dollars, sterling, shekels, roubles, rupees, yuan,

making holocaust of the twisted depths of human ingenuity,

eight decades of the grim acceptance of the plans to

eliminate the lives, names, hopes of generations,

our eyes closed to the darkening of minds.

Somewhere in the heart of God, Creator of Worlds

is the actuality, the truth, the life

of every vaporised victim of that evil Little Boy

and all his many misbegotten offspring.

And somehow to the eyes of faith

Christ's seared irradiated body stands transfigured still,

a sign of hope and a call to change our hearts,

a light of mercy shining brighter than a thousand suns.

© Rob Esdaile, 2025

Fr Rob Esdaile is Parish Priest of St Dunstan's, Woking & St. Hugh of Lincoln, Knaphill