The Geisha

Her new silken wrap was hand painted for spring,
When the blushing cherry blossoms petal take wing.
Her intricate wig with its pins and adornments
Revealed her refinery and her beauty permanent.

But gone are the days when she walked the streets
And attended great men as they drank and whispered sweets.
No newspapers she'll read, nor face paint she'll wear,
For the city of Hiroshima is leveled and bare.

Her once beautiful skin rests not on her bones, unblemished and white
And buried under burning rubble and the coming of eternal night.
All her trinkets destroyed, all her friends as well,
Thanks to the the U.S. and their weapon from Hell.

Who was to think that a whole city of the old and respected,
Of the women and children, could be so easily destructed?
Surely not they, and certainly not a young Geisha as she.
The souls of the lost Hiroshima bemoan their fates and Nagasaki's,

Though there is nothing to be done now; no remedy.
The Geisha's last moments are clear as can be:
Terror, and pain, as she witnessed and felt her doom,
And was buried in a huddle at the far end of her room.

Tremble, poor soul, who knows not that she's dead,
But relives this terror again in accounts that are read.
Her memory lives on but her spirit is in pain;
No funeral rights for her murdered remains.

A Geisha remembered, though she is given no name,
May help to remind the great powers their shame,
And in remembrance may there be a moral:
A Geisha is human just the same,
And quite as mortal.