Re: [xmca] Hiroshima Nagasaki

From: David Preiss <davidpreiss who-is-at uc.cl>
Date: Thu Aug 09 2007 - 21:48:45 PDT

two years ago, I took these poems from here: http://www.point-
editions.com/hahn.htm, sent them then, and send them again.

David

NUCLEAR IMAGES City In Flames

Entering the city on the high tide
I saw the great beast in its red being
I entered at full light on a tide of love
I entered into myself and discovered my own pain
A sun white-hot inside me
kept growing and not growing over and over
and the spirit with its heat-hordes
held itself in and watched itself catch fire
burning in the most secret halo of fire
I watched my body float in living flame
and in the midst of pain and silence
it sank from sight and lost itself in salt
entering the city on a tide of love
entering the city on the high tide

Vision of Hiroshima

Eye in the multifaceted eye of the bomb,
dissolving under the living mushroom.
With the splendor of Man the Unseeing, eye and eye.
The old ones fled, beheaded by the fire,
angels were-stranded on sulfuric horns,
beheaded by the fire.
virgins descended with radioactive halos
beheaded by the fire.
All the children wandered away, beheaded by the sky.
It was not the pitted eye, the ravaged skin,
the blood on the melted street that we saw:
it was lovers surprised in the act
petrified in the magnesium of hell,
lovers turned to stone on the highway,
and Lot’s wife
turned to a column of uranium.
The heated hospital runs out through the sewers,
your frozen heart runs through the latrines,
skitters on all fours under the beds,
like green, incendiary cats
that wail out ashes.
The vibrating waters turn the crow white
and now you cannot forget that skin stuck to the wall
for you will drink, disintegrating, milk out of ashes.
We saw cupolas turn to fire,
orange rivers graze, child-bearing bridges
give birth in the midst of silence.
he strident color tore the heart
out of its very objects:
blood-crimson, leukemia-pink,
tormented wax-red, driven mad by fission.
Oil tore the toes from feet,
chairs beat at the windows,
floating on undercurrents of eyes.

Ciudad en llamas

Entrando en la ciudad por alta mar
la grande bestia vi su rojo ser
Entré por alta luz por alto amor
entréme y encontréme padecer
Un sol al rojo blanco en mi interior
crecía y no crecía sin cesar
y el alma con las hordas del calor
templóse y contemplóse crepitar
Ardiendo el más secreto alrededor
mi cuerpo en llamas vivas vi flotar
y en medio del silencio y del dolor
hundióse y confundióse con la sal:
entrando en la ciudad por alto amor
entrando en la ciudad por alta mar

Visión de Hiroshima

Ojo con el ojo numeroso de la bomba,
que se desata bajo el hongo vivo.
Con el fulgor del Hombre no vidente, ojo y ojo.
Los ancianos huían decapitados por el fuego,
encallaban los ángeles en cuernos sulfúricos
decapitados por el fuego.
se varaban las vírgenes de aureola radiactiva
decapitadas por el fuego.
Todos los niños emigraban decapitados por el cielo.
No el ojo manco, no la piel tullida, no sangre
sobre la calle derretida vimos:
los amantes sorprendidos en la cópula,
petrificados por el magnésium del infierno,
los amantes inmóviles en la vía pública,
y la mujer de Lot
convertida en columna de uranio.
El hospital caliente se va por los desagües,
se va por las letrinas tu corazón helado,
se van a gatas por debajo de las camas,
se van a g atas verdes e incendiadas
que maúllan cenizas.
La vibración de las aguas hace blanquear al cuervo
y ya no puedes olvidar esa piel adherida a los muros
porque derrumbamiento beberás, leche en escombros.
Vimos las cúpulas fosforecer, los ríos
anaranjados pastar, los puentes preñados
parir en medio del silencio.
El color estridente desgarraba
el corazón de sus propios objetos:
el rojo sangre, el rosado leucemia,
el lacre llaga, enloquecidos por la fisión.
El aceite nos arrancaba los dedos de los pies,
las sillas golpeaban las ventanas
flotando en marejadas de ojos.

Óscar Hahn

Published in "Review", © by Oscar Hahn Translated by Alastair Reid
Used by
permission of the author Note on the author: Óscar Hahn, born in
Chile 1938
teaches literature at the University of Iowa

On Aug 9, 2007, at 10:45 PM, Mike Cole wrote:

> It appears that yet another form of amnesia has overtaken xlchc/
> xmca. No
> one has thought to remember, in
> public sorrow, the fact that the United States dropped atomic bombs
> on the
> Japanese cities of Hiroshima and
> Nasaki on Aug 6-9th of some year or other a long time ago.....
> probably too
> long a time ago to remember, so
> many more atrocities have occurred in the interim.
>
> My deepest apologies to my Japanese friends and colleagues for this
> desperate, atrocious acts.
> They were not the last, and certainly not the most recent mistakes
> taken by
> my government in the
> name of democracy and human decency. That such actions taken in my
> name have
> been matched in
> horrifying measure by other countries, for whatever reasons, does
> not lessen
> my responsibility, and the
> responsibility of all those who read this note.
>
> Hiroshima. Nagasaki.
> Those who forget are inviting such treatment on themselves, their
> children,
> and their grandchildren.
>
> In this context I am moved to repeat two messages I read a year ago
> at the
> internment camp in Manzenar, California,
> where thousands of Nisei Americans were interned:
>
> Benjamin Franklin: They that can give up essential liberties to
> obtain a
> little temporaray security deserve neither liberty nor safety"
> Tom Paine: (one of my founding fathers, at least): He that would
> make his
> own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for
> if he
> violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to
> himself.
>
>
> mike
> _______________________________________________
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>

David Preiss, Ph.D.
Subdirector de Extensión y Comunicaciones
Escuela de Psicología
Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile
Av Vicuña Mackenna 4860
Macul, Santiago
Chile

Fono: 3544605
Fax: 3544844
e-mail: davidpreiss@uc.cl
web personal: http://web.mac.com/ddpreiss/
web institucional: http://www.uc.cl/psicologia

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Received on Thu Aug 9 21:51 PDT 2007

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