In a bald skull sits our friend.
In a helmet of third-degree burns,
her quizzical, melancholy grace, her irreplaceable self
in utter peril.
In the radioactive desert walks a woman in a black dress,
white-haired, steady as the luminous hand of a clock.
In circles she walks, knitting and unknitting
her scabbed fingers.
Her face is expressionless.
Shall we pray to her?
Shall we speak of the loose pine needles,
how they shook like the pith of country summers
from the sacks of pitchblende ore in the tin roof
shack where it all began?
Shall we accuse her of denial first of the self,
then of the mixed virtue of the purest science?
Shall we be wise for her in hindsight?
Shall we scream, it has come to this?
Shall we praise her?
Shall we let her wander the atomic desert in peace?