Lucifer, to the Enola Gay

Lucifer, to the Enola Gay
by Michael R. Burch

 
Go then,
and give them my meaning
so that their teeming
streets
become my city.
 

Bring back a pretty
flower--
a chrysanthemum,
perhaps, to bloom
if but an hour,
within a certain room
of mine
where
the sun does not rise or fall,
and the moon,
although it is content to shine,
helps nothing at all.
 

There,
if I hear the wistful call
of their voices
regretting choices
made
or perhaps not made
in time,
I can look back upon it and recall,
in all
its pale forms sublime,
still
Death will never be holy again.
 

Published by Romantics Quarterly, Penny Dreadful and Poetry Life & Times