If I were to open my eyes
in the middle of a street
after a long sojourn blindfolded
Tacky squares, garden-variety gardens
Helpless tress yawning, cut-and-dried
Prosaic fountains humming the tune commonplace
Selfsame blocks housing identical dwellings
Red bricks, yellowed roofs thatching
And a lone letterbox waiting
on a pole leaning, beaten by clime
No great taste of architecture,
No heritage of centuries to care
in the groaning roofs begging repairs
The hedge dividing the roads
bearing hostility with leaves dusty
at the hands and honks of the
heedless cars passing
A council building, a public library
and even an university
But nothing of great concern or value
to the discerning eyes of antiquity
To make my fears shudder further
Even the weather here is mostly balmy
Would 'the little boy' be not lured to this city nondescript
housing million of dreams ordinary
2.
Thousands of temples, hundreds of shrines
Countless tombs housing the royalty at eternal peace
Streets, palaces and monuments many
Geishas rustling past the blossoming cherries
The heritage and culture uniquely Japanese
All, all this would have been part of rubble
An ominous cloud mushrooming the skies
Molten steel, charred dreams
Ashened heritage, history evaporated
A mass of smouldering bodies burnt alive
A cloud of the dead and still dying
The good weather inviting a 'bad day' unlike any
Luring 'the little boy' to seal the fate of Nagasaki
Temples, shrines, palaces and royal tombs
continue to survive, as they have for millennia many
As the unfortunate commons evaporated in a blink
Even in the revenge and in death,
the injustice could not leave their fate.
Does one have to be of great cultural value and heritage
Be it a man or a city nondescript
To make it to the pages of posterity
To be struck off the 'little boy's' playlist
Would every city have to a be a Kyoto
to claim its right to life
How long will the many Nagasakis unsuspecting
keep making it to the list
paying the price for being 'ordinary'
And would Kyoto have been third time lucky
and made it/ to make it beyond the ashes of antiquity?
After all, not every Kyiev is Kyoto
to stir the love for preserving antiquity
for the price/ at the cost of mundane humanity.
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