A Portrait of Albert Einstein

It is only an old poster on the wall -
a black and white portrait of Einstein,
his right eye half closed, his left
cynical, penetrating, directed
at the viewer as if to demand something.
And what could that something be?
Would it by chance concern his conclusion
that his life's work had been perverted
by the makers of wars and bombs?

"Ach," he moaned on August 6, 1945,
when he heard the news from Hiroshima ,
"This has changed everything except
the way man thinks." Later he added
that he would never have lifted a finger
had he known the Nazis would not
have got the bomb. Therefore I can guess
what he demands of us as he looks out
of the past with such intensity - no less
than changing the way we think.

The poster includes a bold caption:
GREAT SPIRITS HAVE ALWAYS
ENCOUNTERED VIOLENT OPPOSITION
FROM MEDIOCRE MINDS. Mice
with mediocre minds have nibbled
holes in Einstein's fluffy hair and brain.

Though I do not seek out irony
I often glance up and find it hard to avoid
as I regard the challenging portrait.

"Tell Me, Phil, Can You See Fallout?"

"Even a thousand bombs will not of themselves decide the issue of a major war. We said there is no defense, and we meant it."
- Philip Morrison

Strange grit had fallen
from the sky above our redwood
picnic table, and the children
pointed up, scared because
they had never seen such an eerie
yellow glow, a powdered mist.

My boy said he could feel it
on his hands, and rubbed it
like sand or mica. And the girl
climbed upon her mother's knee
and demanded to be hugged.
And yet, I thought, this is just
the light pointillists so loved,
as if it broke the world down
to tiny points which dance
before our fervid eyes. Imagine
that - the world dissolved
or exploded into fragments!

Naïve indeed to ask - a question
such as children pose. "Can
you see fallout?" But who
would know best if not my pal,
the nuclear physicist, for he
had stood on white sand
on the fated horrid day of Trinity.
As if to assembled children
he might take upon his knees
he replied, "Oh, it's there all right,
but not that obvious. Of course
it's everywhere." His words
were spoken in a tone that said
Go in peace, my children, for none
escape the perils of their time. 
It's the bombs themselves we fear,
and let the fallout go." And then
he laughed a bitter laugh and said:
"We feel like Dr. Frankenstein.
Our monster ran away, but no crowd
will ever chase that monster down."

The Atomic Trail

"Parents, she said, could take their children along an atomic trail."
- New York Times

What Ms. Kelly of The Atomic Heritage Foundation
means is that the great heroes of the Twentieth Century

include Oppenheimer and Teller, and that their Little
Boy and Fat Man were wondrous inventions.

She means the little children should be led as by a pied
piper through "a discontinuous national park

that would include missile silos in Montana; remnants
of weapons complexes at Hartford, Washington;

the Oak Ridge, Tennessee, National Laboratory;
and dozens of other historic places!" I can see

the children being led past these sacred sites,
peering down into the missile silos, gazing in awe

at the guide who praises the weapons, instills
a profound love of them. I have seen children

led through the Krispy Kreme bakery and given
logo hats and samples of seven kinds of do-nuts

as the pied piper speaks of the wonders, where
the home factory is and when it began turning out

do-nuts, and how many thousands are baked
every day at this site and that. Within an hour

a hundred kids are turned into addicts.
They'll be hooked on Krispy Kremes for life.

At Los Alamos where the atomic trail begins
new generations at risk of genetic mutations

can be led through the chambers of horrors
to which like children they are already addicted.

"Oppenheimer Celebration Examines Myth and Man"
- New York Times

Choosing a site for his Manhattan
Project, J. Robert Oppenheimer

recalled the Eden of his youth,
then turned it into glowing nuclear

waste sites, six hundred at last count
around Los Alamos . The crowd

gathers to celebrate Oppie's hundredth
birthday, he who unleashed a beast

more fearsome than any in history.
Of course we still imagine that if we

are the masters of that beast, restrain it
like a trained bear, we will never suffer

the fate doled out to the Japanese.
On a train as Oppenheimer crossed

America on his way to the work,
he read through The History of the

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ,
although he did not, perhaps, think

long and hard enough about the
Decline and Fall of our planet earth.