FORBIDDEN PLANET
August ’45: first words I ever read,
fire on fire in a small town newspaper,
ATOMIC BOMB; the virgin in the midnight sky,
Trinity looming brighter than a thousand suns:
The Bellerophon pattern is being woven again.
The jubilant light bulb in the leaden squash court
where hell’s pencils scribbled on whitening bones,
was mass times light’s speed squared,
for floral prints burned into living skin:
The Bellerophon pattern is being woven again.
The man in the porkpie hat is still on line
with the Boston brahmin in the silent cathedral,
searching the line for another overload,
who has become death, destroyer of worlds:
The Bellerophon pattern is being woven again.
The workmen scream in the melting roof-tar,
the dim survivors writhe in their bloody flux.
The sage of Chernobyl with rainbow eyes
weaves fire on fire to see God robed in God:
The Bellerophon pattern is being woven again.
-
Author:
Robert Southwick Richmond (
Offline) - Published: December 19th, 2020 15:55
- Comment from author about the poem: The recurring line is the mysterious formula spoken in the 1956 sci-fi film Forbidden Planet. I was six years old and just beginning to learn to read when I read the headlines for Hiroshima in the Abilene, Texas Reporter-News. Trinity: The Trinity nuclear test, July 16th, 1945. Squash court: the Stagg Field Reactor at the University of Chicago, site of the first sustained nuclear chain reaction, a graphite reactor (pencils) built in a squash court. Man in the porkpie hat: J. Robert Oppeneimer. Boston Brahmin: “the Virgin and the Dynamo” in The Education of Henry Adams. Searching the line: the Wichita lineman. Death: Oppenheimer’s invocation of the Bhagavad-Gītā. Workmen: at the Chernobyl disaster. The sage of Chernobyl is Menachem Nahum Twersky (1730-87), founder of the Hasidic lineage of Chernobyl.
- Category: Unclassified
- Views: 20
Offline)
Comments5
' Told you I would be trailing way behind - and so it comes to pass!
What gets through to me though is the horror of the whole damn thing - layer after layer.
Dave
I wrote that poem not very long after the Chernobyl disaster. I'm actually very interested in nuclear technology. There was no reason for Chernobyl - it was a Triumph of Management.
A fine write Robert.
Dave gets lost also, in some banter that I have on here with another poet. It's indecipherable! Eccentric really. heehee.
Good for you orchid - i've lost the banter. Oh where has it gone??I quite liked it - would've liked it more if I could find it again...
However this is an inappropriate remark to have on another's post. Behave yourself.
Woof woof! You know my imaginary dog, Fido? Or is that another bit of the indecipherability? Quite a long word there too. lol.
I don't find the remark inappropriate, but I'm not sure I understand it, either.
I don't find the remark inappropriate, but I'm not sure I understand it, either.
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