“I believe that through discipline, though not through discipline alone, we can achieve serenity, and a certain small but precious measure of the freedom from the accidents of incarnation, and charity, and that detachment which preserves the world which it renounces.”

~Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections (1995) edited by Alice Kimball Smith, p. 155

All is still.

I sit in the park on a wooden bench,

Watching the world go by.

A light post here,

A sign there,

A rusted swing set long unused.

And all was still.

All is calm.

I’m sat upon a stone bench overlooking the sea,

Smelling the salt on the air.

The clouds are bulbous and distant,

The sand white like snow,

The water clear like crystal.

And all was calm.

All is quiet.

I have lain on a street corner.

A rolled newspaper for a pillow.

An old plastic bag floats lazily on the wind

While steam vents from a grate in the sidewalk.

The sun reflects down from a distant window.

And all was quiet.

I return to the present.

Birds and bees fly in the soft breeze,

Children on the swings.

Gulls and Plover walk all over

The water muddied with algae.

People pass in a hurry with faces full of worry,

Cars shimmering in the sun.

And I turned my attention far, far away, yet all too near.

Watching the smoke rising,

Choking all it meets.

Workers rush about below.

Poisoning all it greets,

The loud heaving bellows blow.

The taint retching into the river,

The garbage dumped unceremoniously.

I watched as hooded figures passed with a shiver,

Faces gaunt and bony with poverty.

They thought the world would always stay the same.

People didn’t laugh,

People daren’t cry.

All were silent.

For we had become Death, destroyer of worlds.

And all

was still.