Obscuring Dust
If only Nagasaki had produced
A flimsy beauty quite as spirit-like
As this released by fatality, loosed
By unexpected cataclysm, a spike
Of unimaginable death, a blast
Like Zeta Ophiuchi’s Siamese
Twin. Gorgeousness diaphanous and vast
Did not arise from bombed schoolchildren, trees.
And rice-paper shrines in Hiroshima.
Nothing quite so lovely as the blow wave’s
Bright gas, more gauzy than emphysema
In clinical photos, came from those graves
That were not graves in that luminous day
Below this interstellar wind’s ballet.