Too Many
by cricketjeff on August 11, 2009. © Jeff Green, All rights reserved
Most dreadful end to man’s most dreadful age
A quarter million people ceased to be
The innocent who paid for nations’ rage
Is that too high a price for liberty?
Who has the right to weigh these dreadful tolls
Who can decide which legions have to die
When men assume such vast inhuman roles
Is all that’s left to us the need to cry?
I cannot say if Truman’s act was right
How many would have died another way?
But since those bombs were built we’ve lived in night
Those mushroom clouds a blight on every day
Two planes, two crews, too many deaths to count
All war’s an evil we cannot surmount
Author notes
On the 6th and ninth of August 1945 USAAF bombers dropped the only nuclear
bombs so far used in anger, and approximately 250,000 people died. The other
side of the balance is that it brought an end to a war that had killed almost
50 million people.
English