HIROSHIMA | NEVER AGAIN
Commemorative Event & Peace Ceremony
in honour of all Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims and survivors
especially visiting Hibakusha Shigeko Niimoto Sasamori & Michimasa Hirata
in honour of all Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims and survivors
especially visiting Hibakusha Shigeko Niimoto Sasamori & Michimasa Hirata
Dunedin, New Zealand
9 & 10 August 2012
This commemorative event was organized by Prof. Kevin Clements, Head of The National Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies at Otago University, and his staff, with artistic responses from Dunedin artists Claire Beynon & Stephen Mulqueen.
DEEP SILENCE | CLAIRE BEYNON | An installation of paper boats carrying survivors' texts
Rings of Passage
There is a wind
breaking with eloquence, rain,
a thousand origami cranes for longevity;
and two women, hibakusha, in a garden
of castle rock, stepping stones,
a pond of blue feathers, hiding their faces
behind the fluttering motifs of bamboo
and pine, their skin peeled like a soft plum
exposing the red pit of a muscle. There is a sense
that here in this city, there is a language
we cannot speak. It's the translation we fear most,
like a stone that first glowed,
thrown into the river, widening the rings
of passage, but still visible, still spreading.
The faces we did not see where the mouth
of the river choked on burnt flesh;
where the willow, clutching the dark,
stood weeping over the corpses of children.
breaking with eloquence, rain,
a thousand origami cranes for longevity;
and two women, hibakusha, in a garden
of castle rock, stepping stones,
a pond of blue feathers, hiding their faces
behind the fluttering motifs of bamboo
and pine, their skin peeled like a soft plum
exposing the red pit of a muscle. There is a sense
that here in this city, there is a language
we cannot speak. It's the translation we fear most,
like a stone that first glowed,
thrown into the river, widening the rings
of passage, but still visible, still spreading.
The faces we did not see where the mouth
of the river choked on burnt flesh;
where the willow, clutching the dark,
stood weeping over the corpses of children.
Joanne Monte
Corpses Piled Like Lumber | painting by survivor Kiyomi Kono
and a wreath of paper boats to lay beside the dead (CLAIRE BEYNON)
Hiroshima flag
POPPIES for HIROSHIMA | STEPHEN MULQUEEN
Brass bullet cases fashioned into poppies, mounted on board in the shape of Hiroshima's flag symbol.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
August 6 1945 - an unforgettable date in history. In memory of those who died in the Hiroshima bombing, thousands of glowing paper lanterns are floated on the river. . . In this short film by Velcrow Ripper, a survivor describes what she saw and expresses her wish that this never happen again. Woven throughout, the words of Martin Luther King Jr. ask us: why should we love our enemies?
ODE TO THE ATOM | PABLO NERUDA
Infinitesimal
star,
you seemed
forever
buried
in metal, hidden,
your diabolic
fire.
One day
someone knocked
at your tiny
door;
it was man.
With one
explosion
he unchained you,
you saw the world,
you came out
into the daylight,
you traveled through
cities,
your great brilliance
illuminated lives,
you were a
terrible fruit
of electric beauty,
you came to
hasten the flames
of summer,
and then
wearing
a predator's eyeglasses,
armor, and a checked shirt,
sporting sulfuric mustaches
and a prehensile tail,
came
the warrior
and seduced you:
sleep,
he told you,
curl up,
atom, you resemble
a Greek god,
a Parisian modiste
in springtime,
lie down here
on my fingernail,
climb into this little box,
and then
the warrior
put you in his jacket
as if you were nothing but
a North American
pill,
and he traveled through the world
and dropped you
on Hiroshima.
We awakened.
The dawn
had been consumed.
All the birds
burned to ashes.
An odor
of coffins,
gas from tombs,
thundered through space.
The shape of punishment arose,
hideous,
superhuman,
bloody mushroom, dome,
cloud of smoke,
sword
of hell.
Burning air arose,
spreading death
on parallel waves,
reaching
the mother sleeping
with her child,
the river fisherman
and the fish,
the bakery
and the bread,
the engineer
and his buildings;
everything
was acid
dust,
assassin
air.
The city
crumbled its last honeycombs
and fell, fell suddenly,
demolished,
rotten;
men
were instant lepers,
they took
their children's hand
and the little hand
fell off in theirs.
So, from your refuge
in the secret
mantle of stone
in which fire slept
they took you,
blinding spark,
raging light,
to destroy lives,
to threaten distant existences,
beneath the sea,
in the air,
on the sands,
in every twist and turn
of the ports,
to destroy
seeds,
to kill cells,
to stunt the corolla,
they destined you, atom,
to level
nations,
to turn love into a black pustule,
to burn heaped-up hearts
and annihilate blood.
Mad spark,
go back
to your shroud,
bury yourself
in your mineral mantle,
be blind stone once again,
ignore the outlaws,
and collaborate
with life, with growing things,
replace motors,
elevate energy,
fertilize planets.
You have no secret
now,
walk
among men
without your terrible
mask,
pick up your pace
and pace
the picking of the fruit,
parting
mountains,
straightening rivers,
making fertile,
atom,
overflowing
cosmic
cup,
return
to the peace of the vine,
to the velocity of joy,
return to the province
of nature,
place yourself at our service,
and instead of the fatal
ashes
of your mask,
instead of the unleashed inferno
of your wrath,
instead of the menace
of your terrible light, deliver to us
your amazing rebelliousness
for our grain,
your unchained magnetism
to found peace among men,
and then your dazzling light
will be happiness,
not hell,
hope of morning,
gift to earth.
No comments:
Post a Comment