August 6, 1945

Sixty-seven years is a long time to forget

The faraway victims that we never met,

And the color of their final sunset.

The children born today can never remember;

For years and years, throughout the world,

In towns and fields, no uttered word

Of that war or surrender.

Who alive today can truly say

What horror took place on that day

When the bomb found Hiroshima in its path,

Its heat burning life away

Like a vengeful sun god’s wrath?

And so we turn to dusty books

Where the pictures live in print.

But of the toll that Little Boy took,

The stories there only hint.

Sixty-seven years is a long time to grow,

As the trees, the flowers, and the grass show,

While the Ota River through the town flows

And new festivals shine in the lantern glow.

Throughout the years we failed to hear

The distant Hiroshima echo -

In the victims’ cries under smoke-filled skies

And the beastly bombs’ loud bellow:

Warsaw, Helsinki,

London, Coventry and Belfast;

Hamburg, Cologne,

Essen, Bremen, and Dresden;

Leningrad, Stalingrad,

Bucharest, Budapest, Belgrade;

North Korea, Vietnam,
Beirut, Baghdad, Basra.

Until the day that mankind brings

And end to the making of bombs,

Our children will in remembrance sing
Hiroshima’s deathly songs.