Peace Park, Hiroshima, Japan
The place is full of unfamiliar gods
and fire
and the ghosts of fire
and familiar ghosts.
Angels hold sprays of paper
cranes like folded lives--
long life,
that's what they mean
--cranes drip like benediction
from angel hands in the shadow
of no valley, only twisted stone
and shadows
and the ghosts of shadows:
a shrine for an immediate
god.
(Awe-inspiring, he said,
that's what makes a god.)
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