Tarlton Law Library
Jamail Center for Legal Research

Today Is Not a Good Day for War

Today is not a good day for war,
Not when the sun is shining,
And leaves are trembling in the breeze.

Today is not a good day for bombs to fall,
Not when clouds hang on the horizon
And drift above the sea.

Today is not a good day for young men to die,
Not when they have so many dreams
And so much still to do.

Today is not a good day to send missiles flying,
Not when the fog rolls in
And the rain is falling hard.

Today is not a good day for launching attacks,
Not when families gather
And hold on to one another.

Today is not a good day for collateral damage,
Not when children are restless
Daydreaming of frogs and creeks.

Today is not a good day for war,
Not when birds are soaring,
Filling the sky with grace.

No matter what they tell us about the other,
Nor how bold their patriotic calls,
Today is not a good day for war.

War Is Too Easy

If politicians had to fight the wars
they would find another way.

Peace is not easy, they say.
It is war that is too easy--

 too easy to turn a profit, too easy
to believe there is no choice,

too easy to sacrifice
someone else's children.

Someday it will not be this way.
Someday we will teach our children

that they must not kill,
that they must have the courage

to live peace, to stand firmly
for justice, to say no to war.

Until we teach our children peace,
each generation will have its wars,

will find its own ways
to believe in them.

God Responded with Tears

The bomb dropped far slower than the speed of light.
It dropped at the speed of bombs.

From the ground it was a tiny silver speck
that separated from the silver plane.

The plane flew over Hiroshima and dropped the bomb
after the All Clear warning had sounded.

After 43 seconds, the slow falling bomb exploded
into mass at the speed of light squared.

Einstein called it energy. Everything lit up.
For a split-second people could see their own bones.

The pilot always believed he had done the right thing.
The President, too, never wavered from his belief

that he had done the right thing.
He thanked God for the bomb. Others did, too.

God responded with tears, actually sank down and wept
at being thanked for that.

God's tears fell far slower than the speed of bombs.
They still have not reached Earth.

Kokura

The train pulls slowly into Kokura.
Towers belch thick smoke along its bay.
The city is compact, industrial, gray.
 
On a day destined to become infamous
For its crime and pain,
Just three days after Hiroshima,

A U.S. B-29
Flew from Tinian Island
Again.

The B-29, called Bockscar,
Carried a single plutonium bomb,
A bomb meant to be dropped on Kokura.

But on that infamous day,
Clouds covered Kokura, and
The bombardier couldn't see the ground.

The B-29 flew South, according to plan,
Where the bombardier found
A break in the clouds.

He released the lethal cargo.
The bomb called "Fat Man" drifted down
And tens of thousands died that day in Nagasaki.

The train speeds away from Kokura,
Leaving behind its towers of belching smoke,
Leaving behind this footnote in history.

What Shall We Call the Bomb
Dropped on Hiroshima?

Shall we call it
Flash of White Light Maker or
Mushroom Cloud in Sky Maker?

Shall we call it
Terminator of War Bomb or
Incinerator of People Weapon?

Shall we call it
Secret Victory Weapon or
Dark Shadow Revealing Bomb?

Shall we call it
Rescuer of Young Soldiers Weapon or
Creator of Orphans Bomb?

Shall we call it
The Beginning of the End or
The End of the Beginning?

Hibakusha Still Live
on Earth

 Hibakusha
still live
on earth

their soft
voices
of forgiveness

testimony
to our human
spirit

they bow deep
thanking us
for listening

to their
sad and painful
stories

Someday
the last hibakusha
will take

a last breath
and be
no more

but their pain
and their stories
will live on

Hibakusha is the Japanese
word for the survivors
of the atomic bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Hiroshima Dreams

The night before the city was flattened
By America's new weapon
Hiroshima was filled with meandering dreams--

Dreams of every sort.
Strange, awkward dreams, fearful
And feverish dreams--

Dreams filled with childish wonder.
Dreams of love and sacrifice, dreams
That took one's breath away--

Recurring dreams and new ones.
 Dreams of exquisite beauty
That weighed upon the heart--

Dreams filled with immeasurable grief
Yet still less than morning would bring.
Do dreams die with the child?

And what of the dreams of mothers
When they are suddenly incinerated?
Are these dreams lost forever?

Einstein's Regret

Einstein's regret ran deep
Like the deep pools of sorrow
That were his eyes.

His mind could see things
That others could not,
The bending of light,

The slowing of time,
Relationships of trains passing
In the night, and power,

Dormant and asleep,
That could be awakened,
But who would dare?

He saw patterns
In snowflakes and stars,
Unimaginable simplicity

To make one weep with joy.

When the shadow of Hitler
Spread across Europe.
What was Einstein to do

But what he did?
His regret ran deep, deeper
Than the deep pools of sorrow

That were his eyes.

Guernica

Picasso's passion for peace
Symbol of war's horrors
Screams of death and agony
Fallen man, fallen horse

Nazi Luftwaffe bombs falling
On small Basque village
It was market day, market day
The streets were jammed

Nazis bombed and strafed
Planes diving, machine guns firing
The young Luftwaffe pilots
Found the marketplace

Screaming villagers and peasants
Running for their lives
As death blurted from the sky that day
Seventeen hundred murdered and maimed

Picasso shared his human outrage
In his unforgettable Guernica
The Guernica of screams and death
Of fallen man, fallen horse

Bland bureaucrats may try to hide
The Guernica of screams and death
To protect the shameless ones
Who thunder for more war.

But Guernica cannot so easily
Be put aside: Cover Guernica
And its power breaks through
Starker, stronger, truer

Symbol of war's horrors
Screams of death and agony
For those who would make war
Guernica was painted for you

Guernica-A Tragedy Revisited

Guernica is a small Basque village that was brutally attacked by the Nazi Luftwaffe on April 27, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. The attack on the unarmed inhabitants of Guernica left 1,700 villagers and peasants dead or maimed. It was still unusual at that time for an air force to deliberately bomb a civilian population.

The tragedy and brutality that occurred at Guernica was immor-talized by Pablo Picasso in his impassioned mural expressing his outrage at the murderous attack. It is one of Picasso's masterpieces that is known throughout the world. It depicts the horrors of war, the silent screams of men and beasts.

Picasso's Guernica was in the news as the United States prepared for war against Iraq. The tapestry reproduction of the famous mural that hangs outside the entrance to the United Nations Security Council was covered with a blue curtain on the occasion of US Secretary of State Colin Powell presenting his evidence to the Council for war against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. UN officials said that the blue curtain was to provide a better background for the television cameras. Certainly it is a more comfortable background, far easier on the eyes and minds of those who plead for war than the twisted, tormented figures portrayed in Picasso's Guernica.

No leader should be protected from Picasso's Guernica. The tapestry of Guernica hanging outside the Security Council is a reminder to leaders of the brutality of war. To cover such art is to hide from the truth, and is made all the worse when it is done to protect the sensibilities of leaders who would wage war.

Those leaders who would promote war for any reason should at a minimum have the courage to look straight at Picasso's Guernica. War should never be sanitized or made to appear heroic. There is nothing heroic about middle aged war hawks sending young men and women off to kill and die. It was not heroic at Guernica, and it is no more so today.

A Short History Lesson: 1945

August 6th:
Dropped atomic bomb
On civilians
At Hiroshima.

August 8th:
Agreed to hold
War crimes trials
For Nazis.

August 9th:
Dropped atomic bomb
On civilians
At Nagasaki.

Well, Have a Bowl of Cerebral

   -- for Terry Tempest Williams

Most assuredly, 5:00 a.m. is early
To be explaining Bosch's Hell on TV.
Yet, there is fire in your eyes.

In Lubbock, Texas, who knows who
is buying up environmental archives,
And one-breasted clans are on the rise.

There are fires everywhere,
But too few humans seem to care.
They live too easily with lies.

The wilderness is disappearing.
What difference one more fire?
What meaning our soft cries?

We've collared wolves and bear.
The ash is in the air.
The bloated billboards no surprise.

Surely apathy is a crime
When the world is burning in our time
And, for most, possessions are the prize.

Our city lives have made us lazy,
Drowsy, apathetic, crazy.
Flames reach for the clouded skies.

Secrets in the Breeze

The Breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
   Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
   Don't go back to sleep.
   -- Rumi

But you can't go back to sleep
   If you haven't yet awakened.
And how can you ask for what you really want
   If you don't know what is real?

If you want to learn the secrets of the breeze
   You must shake yourself awake.
If you want to leave behind your dream world
   You must discover in the sound of leaves

What is real and what is not.

Krieger is Deputy Chair of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (Germany); a member of the Committee of 100 for Tibet; and a member of the International Steering Committee of the Middle Powers Initiative. He is also a founder and a member of the Global Council of Abolition 2000, a global network of over 2000 organizations and municipalities committed to the elimination of nuclear weapons. He serves on the Advisory Council of Free the Children International (Toronto), Global Resource Action Center for the Environment (New York), the International Council of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide (Israel), the International Institute for Peace (Vienna), the Peace Resources Cooperative (Japan), the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research (Sweden), and the War and Peace Foundation (New York). He also serves as a board [*713] member of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy (New York), the Foundation for Conscious Evolution (Santa Barbara).
He is a recipient of the Peace Educator of the Year Award of the Consortium of Peace Research, Education and Development (2001); the Gakudo Peace Award of the Ozaki Yukio Memorial Foundation (2001); the Soka Gakkai Hiroshima Peace Award (2000); the Peace Award of the International Journal of Humanities and Peace (2000); the Soka Gakkai International Peace and Culture Award (1997); the Soka University Award of Highest Honor (1997); the Peace Award of the War and Peace Foundation (1996); the Big Canvas Award of Santa Barbara Magazine (1996); and the Bronze Medal of the Hungarian Engineers for Peace (1995).
In his early career he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Hawaii and at San Francisco State University. He worked at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions on issues of international law and ocean governance, and at the Foundation for Reshaping the International Order (RIO Foundation) in the Netherlands on the effects of dual-purpose technologies on disarmament, development and the environment.
Krieger is a graduate of Occidental College, holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in political science from the University of Hawaii and received his J.D. from the Santa Barbara College of Law. He is married and has three children.
"Unhealed Wounds of Humanity" first appeared in David Krieger (ed.), Hope in a Dark Time: Reflections on Humanity's Future (Capra Press, 2003).