Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.
Maya Khosla
Oppenheimer quotes the Bhagwad Gita
"The atomic energy commission formulated its research policy in a series of meetings, the most important one held at Bohemian Grove..."
I want to walk this new land. Twisted iron. Fine, cream-colored dust covers everything, the slippers I slip into. They are melted together like a woman’s wrist bones. I did not ask to look. But she lives in the umbra of silence beseeching me, stump-arms lifted.
It has been years since the night-clad car pulled up alongside my stride. I was barefoot, a refugee with physics under one arm.
I was escorted to where tall redwoods spoke with their thousand-year breath. I wanted to listen to their story of quiet moisture and verve—
but human voices swelled in crescendo, begging me for molecular secrets, for the white heat of light. The redwoods swayed, turned skyward
as I do now. Rain pelts, fast and gritty, turns ashen. Around me, faces, wet faces so tranquil I could swear it isn’t blood, but just sleep, dripping from their mouths.
Now wind, my upturned umbrella: ribs displaying themselves, open, captive, under thick cloud-jaws. Brighter than a thousand suns I am become death, destroyer of the worlds.
I find water, drink. It lights up, a fiery eye scorching sleep.
