{"id":1677,"date":"2007-08-06T16:26:00","date_gmt":"2007-08-06T16:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2007\/08\/lest-we-forget-62-years-ago-today.html"},"modified":"2007-08-06T16:26:00","modified_gmt":"2007-08-06T16:26:00","slug":"lest-we-forget-62-years-ago-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/08\/lest-we-forget-62-years-ago-today.html","title":{"rendered":"Lest we forget: 62 years ago today"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> Jim Wallis over at Beliefnet posted this haunting poem<\/a>, from a Catholic poet named Mitsuyoshi Toge, who survived the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima:<\/p>\n

How could I ever forget that flash of light!
In a moment, thirty thousand people ceased to be,
The cries of fifty thousand killed
At the bottom of crushing darkness; <\/p>\n

Through yellow smoke whirling into light,
Buildings split, bridges collapsed,
Crowded trams burnt as they rolled about
Hiroshima , all full of boundless heaps of embers.
Soon after, skin dangling like rags;
With hands on breasts;
Treading upon the broken brains;
Wearing shreds of burn cloth round their loins;
There came numberless lines of the naked,
all crying.
Bodies on the parade ground, scattered like
jumbled stone images of Jizo;
Crowds in piles by the river banks,
loaded upon rafts fastened to the shore,
Turned by and by into corpses
under the scorching sun;
in the midst of flame
tossing against the evening sky,
Round about the street where mother and
brother were trapped alive under the fallen house
The fire-flood shifted on.
On beds of filth along the Armory floor,
Heaps, and God knew who they were \u2026
Heaps of schoolgirls lying in refuse
Pot-bellied, one-eyed, with half their skin peeled
off bald.
The sun shone, and nothing moved
But the buzzing flies in the metal basins
Reeking with stagnant ordure.
How can I forget that stillness
Prevailing over the city of three hundred thousands?
Amidst that calm,
How can I forget the entreaties
Of departed wife and child
Through their orbs of eyes,
Cutting through our minds and souls? <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pray for peace. Now, and always. <\/p>\n

Photo: Prayer lanterns at Hiroshima, 2006. By Shizuo Kambayashi, AP <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jim Wallis over at Beliefnet posted this haunting poem, from a Catholic poet named Mitsuyoshi Toge, who survived the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima: How could I ever forget that flash of light! In a moment, thirty thousand people ceased to be, The cries of fifty thousand killed At the bottom of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nLest we forget: 62 years ago today - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/08\/lest-we-forget-62-years-ago-today.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lest we forget: 62 years ago today - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jim Wallis over at Beliefnet posted this haunting poem, from a Catholic poet named Mitsuyoshi Toge, who survived the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima: How could I ever forget that flash of light! 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