Poems of Peace: McLord Selasi, "Nagasaki Cicadas"

Nagasaki Cicadas

The children play where glass once broke like bells.

The playground swings and shadows pitch and yaw.

The wind still hums through hollowed citadels

as if it grieved what human hands once saw.

 

The cicadas scream like Geiger counts at noon,

but only trees now carry that refrain.

No pilots here, no detonating moon—

just rust and grass, and boys outracing rain.

 

The world, absurd, persists in making more:

more children, more cicadas, more July.

A girl stands still. She points toward the shore

and counts the clouds dissolving in the sky.