This poem doesn’t need explanation, at least if you have visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Outside Japan you may only know these names because of the atomic bomb. This single reductive moment does not define Nagasaki, nor Hiroshima. Nagasaki is not the bomb Nagasaki is not the bomb, not future nullified No present, obliterated past. Not the mere shadowed imprint Of a flash of falling fire Not just the runner up In Hiroshima’s winning race. Hiroshima, where one brilliant August day  The silver bird dropped Little Boy On children in their play. A brilliant day just like when we were on the sacred peak of Mount Misen  On Miyajima, as high…