PLUTONIUM (four poems)

Sayeed


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PLUTONIUM: Inspired by the obituary of Glenn Seaborg, this poem looks at the choices facing the Japanese before they entered the war, and the choices facing the Americans as they created the atomic bomb: Seaborg was among the scientists who wanted the Japanese to be given a demonstration of the destruction they could expect, but their demand was turned down.

UNTO OTHERS: we ask of the west, "What can it do for me", and do not realise what the west has done to collectives and may do to us in the future.

THE THIRD: What prevents us from getting at each other's throat? The state. And when that breaks down, the Third is some kind of Deity.

THE WISDOM OF CHILDREN: Wordsworth (and the Romantics) thought children were wiser than adults, and glorified the irrational, which culminated in the crazed nationalism of the French Revolution; these ideas came to us in 1952....