"Bomb" by Gregory Corso (3/26/1930-1/17/2001), first published by City Lights as a pamphlet in 1958. I can't reproduce it here because it's shaped like a rising mushroom cloud, and the paper copy in The Happy Birthday of Death (New Directions, 1960) is too long to scan like a picture. However, here's a link to catch a glimpse of how it looks.
Mini-sequel to "Bomb," also by Corso:
"Many Have Fallen"
In 1958 I took to prophecy
the heaviest kind: Doomsday
It was announced in a frolicy poem called BOMB
and concluded like this:
Know that in the hearts of men to come
more bombs will be born
. . . yea, into our lives a bomb shall fall
Well, 20 years later
not one but 86 bombs, A-Bombs, have fallen
We bombed Utah, Nevada, New Mexico,
and all survived
. . . until two decades later
when the dead finally died
For a million things Beat and Beat-rleated, there's the nifty-fifty Blue Neon Alley.
Today's Rune: Growth.
Hasta La Vista!
5 comments:
Powerful poem - the end could refer to much more . . . eventually it all catches up with us - the whatever we caused - and we die another death - greater than the one we died before - when we left our conscious behind.
Yes, Eric . . . VIVA Sagittarians!
Wow, what a poem. Nuclear fall out is a scary thing.
I sometimes read Bomb magazine's short story inserts. Not that that has anything to do with today's post.
Corso is new to me - and ta for the link. Makes a big impression in that format...
Thanks, y'all, for the comments -- much appreciated.
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