Los Alamos - Carlos Peron

make a pair of wings for his head

On top of which his hands fold in a clasp

He looks like Spencer Tracy now

For forty years then Harold Agnews’life tracked the atomic age

From Chicago to Los Alamos to Hiroshima to Los Alamos to Lascala (?)

If King Kong, eliciting an audience’s sympathies by representing

a force taken out of nature and abused

The innocent atom wore a gorilla suit

King is less troubled by capsules in his land

Than by a rabid skunk in the area that might have threatened his children

And by a raccoon that commandeers the basketball backboard over the

garage and will not back off

Well anyway, we put the stuff together the next morning

And it looked as if the thing was going to go critical

Then Fermet says Let’s go have lunch.

So we started it all up again in the afternoon

And it went critical, and that was that

Some men no doubt, will, before sleep, consider one thought:

I am alone.

But some, in the mercy of God or booze, do not

Long stare at the dark ceiling

Nixon’s office is much hotter now

The air-conditioning is missed

Outside, an early fourth-of-July celebration

Has set off a brief volley of Chinese firecrackers

By nightfall, the East River will be ablaze with rockets

Those born in the atomic age will most likely die in the atomic age

If they do not die because of it Those born in the atomic age will most likely die in the atomic age

If they do not die because of it Those born in the atomic age will most likely die in the atomic age

If they do not die because of it Those born in the atomic age will most likely die in the atomic age

If they do not die because of it