Nathan Lefkoff

 

Calculated Poem: Spiritus Mundi

 

Inspired by: -W.B. Yeats’ poem, The Second Coming

-research on the 1980 Mt. St. Helens eruption

-research on the bombing of Hiroshima during WWII

Spritus Mundi- “spirit of the world” (from The Second Coming)

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Spiritus Mundi

 

Grieving in the gain of loss,

St. Helena tore herself open

and regurgitated like a mother bird for nine hours

to betray 11 million animals, 4 billion feet of timber,

and the man with the cats that could have fled but did not.

A force 500 times the bomb over Hiroshima,

 

the cloud that was purple and flashed internally.

Bodies erupted and spewed their dust and ashes

and something recoiled like the hand from the fire

and somebody stared as blank and as pitiless

as the face of a mountain.

 

That plane was a falcon,

strapped to its master,

and all it could hear was the falconer

as it shunned the gaping

 

its pilot blinder than the bomb that fell

to deafen a nation

and hatch desert birds that were trapped in the chests

of tens of thousands

 

to fly with the wind

and to nest in volcanoes