The A1 Verse: Victory Day
By Thomas Gaulkin | May 9, 2022
Every so often, stories published on the front page of the New York Times are so well written, meaningful, and appropriate to the Bulletin’s concerns that small snippets of them, properly chosen and arranged, produce something more than journalism, something that approaches … poetry. That blessed coincidence occurred May 9, 2022.
We suspect it’ll occur again.
(from the originals by Anton Troianovski and Roger Cohen)
On a day of oration of the end of War,
War was small and War was thin,
but marked by posturing, somehow big.
Men ramped up rhetoric,
and Leaders vowed to mark their victory
over remembering triumph.
Love (unjustifiable and little pursued)
orchestrated something different,
orchestrated a show of lost empire
(called The Devastation of World)
to shame the parade of War…
A solemn procession of people
with portraits that celebrate the Sky,
and put on display the shared World.
War appeared to signal back,
determined to double down.
Together, we make the world safer.
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Keywords: Europe, Russia, The A1 Verse, Ukraine, Victory Day, poetry, war
Topics: Special Topics
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Thomas Gaulkin
Thomas Gaulkin is multimedia editor at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Prior to joining the Bulletin in 2018, he spent the... Read More
