My photo
ALBERT B. CASUGA, a Philippine-born writer, lives in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, where he continues to write poetry, fiction, and criticism after his retirement from teaching and serving as an elected member of his region's school board. He was nominated to the Mississauga Arts Council Literary Awards in 2007. A graduate of the Royal and Pontifical University of St. Thomas (now University of Santo Tomas, Manila. Literature and English, magna cum laude), he taught English and Literature (Criticism, Theory, and Creative Writing) at the Philippines' De La Salle University and San Beda College. He has authored books of poetry, short stories, literary theory and criticism. He has won awards for his works in Canada, the U.S.A., and the Philippines. His latest work, A Theory of Echoes and Other Poems was published February 2009 by the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House. His fiction and poetry were published by online literary journals Asia Writes and Coastal Poems recently. He was a Fellow at the 1972 Silliman University Writers Workshop, Philippines. As a journalist, he worked with the United Press International and wrote an art column for the defunct Philippines Herald.

Thursday, August 6, 2015

HIROSHIMA: YOKED HAIKUS




MY POEM TODAY IS A SET OF HAIKUS YOKED TO OBJECTIFY THE HORRIFYING EXPERIENCE OF THE USE OF THE FIRST ATOMIC BOMB AS AN INSTRUMENT OF WAR. On August 6, 1945, The American War Plane Enola Gay dropped the Atomic Bomb that the US invented and approved by President Truman to be dropped on the Japanese City to purportedly end World War II. What an end it was. Might this happen again?


HIROSHIMA: YOKED HAIKUS
(For all the Victims of War, Lest We Forget)
...
It was easy to
let the Big Boy go, Enola
Gay, it simply killed.


No, not just bodies,
But a country's broken soul:
Ruptured, killed, kaput.

 
Slay the children,
Memories cannot perish.
They remain alive.


It is sepuku,
Harakiri, and all that
too, stemming war.


Incinerate all
children and otosans too,
stop this damn war.


It goes on to kill
more in old Nagasaki
while damn Yankees cheer.


Hiroshima, we
still mourn for human cruelty
that came as a cloud.



---ALBERT B. CASUGA
August 6, 2015



The story behind LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt's image of a mother and child in the wasteland of 1945 Hiroshima:


 

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