Miyuki Bridge, Hiroshima

(August 6, 1945)

It’s the ekphrastic that never should have

happened, survivors slumped over the bridge

on the blast perimeter, hair singed, skin

suspended like tattered rags, everyone silent

except for the young mother wildly rocking

her charred baby, entreating it to nurse again,

to cry as loudly as it wanted; but the photo

is mercifully silent. The girl in a school uniform

with her back to the camera is Mitsuko Kouchi ,

who lived miraculously into her eighties.

Most of the others would last only a matter

of hours, staring at the photographer

as if begging him to tell their story,

as if forbidding him to tell it their story.

*photo by Yoshito MATSUSHIGE