William Heyen – I

The End   

 

 

If at all possible I’d rather not stop talking

about Mr. Tanimoto, his black hair, his bamboo pole,

& the fish that I imagine as accompanying us, in Time,

forth & back across the river. It is not that

to stop talking would be to cease remembering. It is not that

to stop talking would be to practice resignation.

It is just that if I stopped talking I would be left to see

with all these x-rayed eyes at the moment of the flash.

I need to keep talking until the bomb,

if it ever not will never, drinks back into itself

the unleashed light. If I do not never cease not talking,

Enola Gay will be sailing toward but not reach the city.

But now I tell myself to desist. I close my mouth,

but cannot not think or never not need to scream.