GH,

A few factoids first in case they are helpful. Charcoal is not the same as
burnt wood. It results from the smothered combustion of wood and I'm not
sure that is what you want to imply (and the connotations of charcoal as a
readily ignitable fuel).

If there was a nuclear explosion, wouldn't you get a flash of light first,
followed by the noise and then the blast front followed by the fireball?
That's what I know from the docos, though I haven't been there either and
could be wrong.

"then" is not a conjunction, but appears as such at the end of S2. Does it
matter? Hell, there are people out there writing in streams of
consciousness.

 I've never been keen on "Ladybug" when the insect in question is a beetle,
but I'm straying beyond my remit here, and risk getting into deep water. If
that's the word that has been passed to you when you were growing up, then
perhaps you should stick to it.

"I thought of the garden.....................Eden".  The Garden of Eden,
lost in more than one sense, is powerful here. Once you were good-natured
enough to comment on one of my poems. I'd said something like ...."the
innocent stream down from the hill..." and you'd said that I needed to show
in what way the stream was innocent. I was as happy to have your comment
then as I am now. Both in my poem and in yours the innocence of the natural
landscape beyond human endeavour was in contrast to the horrors of war. You
will know well that there is a tradition of "natural goodness" dating back
to Wordsworth and before. "Human world-bad, countryside-good" is the
assumption, whether literally true or not. So I wonder if "innocence" is a
loaded word, carrying with it the weight of traditional symbolism, which if
understood, can go unspoken. So alternative forms for the last lines of S3
could be:

"...in that instant before the sun devoured me I thought of the blackbird
cocked on the innocent lawn,
or......................................................................"of
the innocent swans at the water's edge. etc   Many permutations, no doubt,
but no need to dwell on them.

Finally, a full-stop after the last word of the poem might be in order.

BTW my favourite line was "oh-ing like shubunkin".


VBW,

Colin




----- Original Message -----
From: "grasshopper" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, March 03, 2003 3:46 AM
Subject: New sub: Bang


>                 Bang
>
>
> Last night they dropped
> a nuclear bomb on Canford Heath.
> Lying so near a port,
> it always risks a strike,
> and through the dry weather,
> bored children burn small holocausts
> between the gorse and bramble,
> turn living wood to charcoal,
> like angry minor gods.
>
> I was at an afternoon party,
> standing by French windows
> framing sky. Something stopped.
> My ears popped, and I couldn't hear
> what people were saying.
> There was just enough time
> to gaze at each other
> and gesture at our ears,
> oh-ing like shubunkin, then
>
> we knew and all dropped
> to the carpet. In that instant
> before the sun devoured me
> I thought of the garden outside
> the larkspurs, ladybugs and robin,
> all innocent as Eden.
>
> In reality, of course,
> there would be no time
> for theology
>
>                            grasshopper
>
>