Nuclear Deployment 1981

Bitter it is to live under the cloud.
You have given me something to long for
But how it has keened me to the world's pain.

Nuclear balance!  Tell me, is it like unemployment insurance?
These sad men who lead us
Tell us smilingly and threateningly of balance
And all I see between their lines is:
Woman weeping for her children
Refusing comfort because
They are not.

(poem could end here)

Gandhi after Gandhi mention how many millions of starving
People could be fed for the price
Of just one
One warhead
And I am confounded:  Horrified that I live in this time.

How long?
How long do we carry our lives like baskets of eggs
Over string bridges that span volcanos?

The world suffers such hard testing--
Not just having to boil in the blood bath
But also having to wait
Waiting for it all to
Fall out
When?
When will the specter arise
And scatter all the children like ashes
Ashes they fall
Ashes they all fall down

Could your laborers have guessed,
Those who bore the heat and burden of the day,
Could they possibly have imagined of these last, idle few
Standing in the market so late
Who only work for a few short hours
Could they have guessed
That our souls from birth would be so incinerated
By the climate of our times?

You have given me hope beyond the incineration
Where once hope had no root to send down
But I guard it here,
In Mordor’s bowels,
In the dragon’s darkness
And my hope is a glowing holy sword in his darkness
That rouses his wrath and kindles his malice
Because of his horrible, inevitable doom

Oh Woman!  How many tears you have wept!