Uranium

Robert René Galván

“Now I am become Death,

the destroyer of worlds.”

— lines from the Bhagavad Gita recited by Robert Oppenheimer as he witnessed the first nuclear blast at Trinity.

Discovered along with the seventh planet,
both namesakes of the god of the celestial ocean, 
at first graced green glass and thought
to be innocuous, but then coaxed
into a controlled frenzy at Alamogordo,
the toxic plume formed a cauliflower
over the desert sand;
Oppenheimer watched from the bunker
and knew there was no retreat
from what he had done.

Three weeks later, the bay doors opened
over Hiroshima and Little Boy
descended like a dark angel,
the denizens’ shadows fixed on the pavement,
only the frame of the Domū stood
like a delicate frond of Queen Anne’s lace.

We are held hostage by that moment
and now its progeny spews poison
into the sea on the opposite shore;
a toxic shroud envelopes 
the relentless tide.

The Science

Upon its discovery in 1789 as the first known radioactive element, U/Uranium, was named for the Greek god of the celestial ocean, Uranus. The planet Uranus had been discovered in 1781. The element occurs naturally in the earth’s crust, but its unstable form, U-235, is used in nuclear weapons and in reactors. At first, it was considered harmless and was used in ‘uranium glass’, which was made by adding its oxide form to glass before melting to create a green colour. Items made of this material included bowls, drinking glasses and even marbles and beads. Such items are considered antique collectables, but the use of uranium for this purpose is dated as far back as 79 AD when the Romans used what we now know to be uranium oxide to make yellow glass.  Oppenheimer and Fermi weaponised the substance in the mid-20th-century and there is no turning back as he intuited when he spoke those lines from the Bhagavad Gita as he witnessed the Trinity blast. Weeks later, the ‘Little Boy’ atomic bomb was deployed. The skeletal Hiroshima Domū has always reminded me of Queen Anne’s lace, Ammi majus.

The Poet

Robert René Galván, born in San Antonio, resides in New York City where he works as a professional musician and poet. His collections of poems are Meteors, published by Lux Nova Press and Undesirable: Race and Remembrance, Somos en Escrito Foundation Press, Standing Stones, Finishing Line Press and The Shadow of Time, Adelaide Books. His poetry was recently featured in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Azahares Literary Magazine, Gyroscope, Hawaii Review, Hispanic Culture Review, Newtown Review, Panoply, Prachya Review, Sequestrum, Shoreline of Infinity, Somos en Escrito,  Stillwater Review, West Texas Literary Review, and the Winter 2018 issue of UU World. He is a Shortlist Winner Nominee in the 2018 Adelaide Literary Award for Best Poem. Recently, his poems are featured in Puro ChicanX Writers of the 21st Century(2nd Edition) and in Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art and Thought. His poems have been nominated for Best of Web and the Pushcart Prize. His poem, Awakening, was featured in the author’s voice on NPR as part of National Poetry Month in the Spring of 2021.

Next poem: Vegetal Energy by Blaise