This poem is called "A Volcano in Kyushu."
Now, Kyushu is the big southern island of Japan.
It has an enormous--
it's virtually a volcanic construction.
It has an enormous caldera in the center,
and in the middle of the caldera is an active cone called
Mount Aso, where Japanese people like to go sightseeing.
Because it doesn't look like Japan there,
it looks like the West.
I mean, it looks like Nevada or something, sort of blasted.
[LAUGHTER]
Also, as it happens, Nagasaki is in Kyushu,
which was the second city to be hit by an atom bomb.
And when you're traveling around in those parts, occasionally,
you see middle-aged people with keloids,
atomic radiation burn scars that don't go away
on their faces or bodies.
So this is based on a little trip
that I took when we went to Mount Aso.
"Mount Aso, uplands, horses, rimrock, the sightseeing buses
crammed to view bare rock, brown grass, space,
sulphury cliffs, streaked snow.
Whiffing the fumaroles, a noseless, shiny,
mouth-twisted middle-aged man.
Blue jeans, check shirt, silver buckle.
J. Robert Oppenheimer, 20 years ago
watching the bulldozers tearing down pines at Los Alamos."