The Aftermath (Poetry)

First published in Word Craft Issue 9 Autumn 1983

Innocent of the death they bore
Hot breezes scorched the valley floor
Then silence spread its fingers wide
To stroke the hills on either side
And through the layered dusty haze
A bloody sun pierced callous rays.

The tainted wind came like a thief
And stole the green from every leaf
’Til grey as ash the forest stood
A crumbling charnel-house of wood:
These innocents by science choked;
One button pushed and Hell evoked.

And we who watch with haunted eyes
The savage painted nuclear skies,
Abandoned in our frantic grief
We grasp the threads of lost belief
In hope that God will hear us pray
And save His world we threw away.