Abide the Nijyuu Hibakusha

Seven hours by train,

Dedicated to his job,

Put him in a place

That looking back, he would've

Rather been anywhere else.

Abide the Nijyuu Hibakusha.

At Mitsubishi

Beneath the ominous thrum

Looking to the sky

Eyes the infamous bomber

Dropping one small catalyst.

Abide the Nijyuu Hibakusha.

Photospheric shock

Blasts dirt, dust, shrapnel, debris

Blocking out the sun

Throwing him like a ragdoll

Shattering eardrums, blinding.

Abide the Nijyuu Hibakusha.

With burns blistering,

Tsutomu Yamaguchi,

Crawled to a shelter,

Swam through floating dead bodies,

Yearning for his family.

Abide the Nijyuu Hibakusha.

The dead and dying

Filled the train he climbed aboard

Smells of blood and ash

Surrounded, as he endured,

Back home to Nagasaki.

Abide the Nijyuu Hibakusha.

To his family,

He appeared unknown, a ghost,

Bandages falling,

And blackened burns on his face,

Fielding a thousand questions.

Abide the Nijyuu Hibakusha.

A diligent man,

Tsutomu, with all his wounds,

Made his way to work,

Aug. 9th, 11 a.m.;

Minutes later, the bomb dropped.

Abide the Nijyuu Hibakusha.

Without decorum

Serber dubbed the bomb "Fat Man."

With death warrant signed,

40,000 were erased

In that primal, searing, flash.

Abide the Nijyuu Hibakusha.

His work building razed,

Cancerous radiation

Charring flesh again.

But, his Hiroshima tales

Helped his kindred find safety.

Abide the Nijyuu Hibakusha.

Tsutomu's hair gone,

Vomiting around the clock,

Gangrene had set in

Malefic burning fever

And the Emperor concedes.

Abide the Nijyuu Hibakusha.

Having recovered

Unlike so many others,

Remaining silent,

He chose to express himself

Privately, through poetry.

Abide the Nijyuu Hibakusha.

He wrote his memoir

Come the oughts, and followed it

With a tanka book,

Now publicly speaking out

Against nuclear weapons.

Abide the Nijyuu Hibakusha.

This "twice-bombed person"

Who lived to be ninety-three,

Spent his final years

Telling the stockpiling world

To cease the mounting madness. 

We should be so lucky.