For We Are The Children Of The Atomic Age - Erika Horn

[Larry Robinson]

For We Are The Children Of The Atomic Age

For Dr. Helen Caldicott

        I. 
          For we are the children of the Atomic Age
          Before our birth our genes were coded and spliced

             Yet the earth, the earth, is beautiful

          For fallout the wind brings that we cannot see
          For nuclear power plants and missiles mapping our trails

             Yet the earth is so beautiful

          For the deception of powerful men we pay and pay
          For their so strange illusion of boundless power

             Yet the earth, the earth is so beautiful

          for bald eagles and other endangered species
          for the tragic magnificence of all the doomed

             Yet the earth is beautiful everywhere

          For people born today who will not live too long
          For the medical profession which has no enduring cure

             Yet the earth is beautiful still beautiful

          For how we turn to flora and fauna for healing and love
          for how those men's vision wins out over the earth

            Yet the earth is still beautiful

          How we dream again of her green vegetative hair
          How they dream of an abstract ghostly heaven

             Yet the earth, the earth, is beautiful

          For our irradiated food and pesticide-drenched crops
          For our vast indulgences that led to these disasters

             Yet the earth is still beautiful

          For foolish men's dreams of escaping to the stars
          For their deadly machinery and all its effects

             Yet the earth, the earth, is beautiful everywhere

          for how the polar caps are really melting
          for our prophecies of falling into the sea

             Yet the earth, the earth and sea, are beautiful

          For the thousands of species that have already died
          For us who would like to survive---
                  For the earth / sea / sky are beautiful, so beautiful

          II.         

          For how nature's subtle patterns resemble one another
          How fireflies mirror the distant stars

          And Hindu palaces look like children's sandcastles
          And the sea contains butterfly patterned fish

          For how black bats spread darkness with their caped wings
          And light and shadow coruscate in a dance

          For how shadows sew the living and dead together
          And spirals connect us--fetuses, snails, corpses--
                     in the world's coiled womb

          For how the willow's slender leaves drop like tears
          And foxgloves, little delicate bells of dawn,
                     sway to the gong of the wind

          For how mountains are molded like breasts
          And cow parsnip umbels delicate as grandma's white lace

          And coleuses might have been daubed by artists' brushes

          For how bird of paradise have beaks sharp as feathered birds'
          And hummingbirds, fishes, frogs and stars share in the
                       world's iridescent luminescence

          And for how the trees' leaves are their mantle of hair
          That they shed and grow, grow and shed and shed and grow again

          And for how cat, zebra, raccoon and tiger lily
          Are marked by the same wind-driven eternal fingers

          For how our eyes sparkle like jewels, illuminating darkness--
          Brown for the earth, blue for the sky, green for the sea

          And for how our bodies contain arteries of water
          Like the earth its net of oceans, lakes and rivers--
                   Its profusion of life sustaining blood

          For how the sun rises each morning on its own legs
          And disappears each night into a mesh of crimson darkness

          And for how the moon trails the sea after it
          Like a bride a billowing wedding train

          For how fresh snow is like froth of foam capped waves
          And for the rainbow painting arches in the sky

          And for how we are here today in the flesh
          And for how soon there may be few left like us

          For we--we are the children--of the Atomic Age

          For all this and for the earth, the earth,
          Which is beautiful, still beautiful everywhere we go  

                   - Erika Horn
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