ATOMIC SLUMBER

ATOMIC SLUMBER

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

Go far away to the remotest desert

Where you’ll rest forever unnoticed

You pestilent idea of Atomic War!

Have mercy on the farmer

Who’s been wishing to raise

His family to full decency

And so too on the labourer

Whose sweat has been aspiring

To transmute into purest gold

For the betterment of basic living.

Go far away to the remotest desert

Where you’ll be buried in oblivion

You pestilent thought of Atomic War!

Have mercy on children whose smiles

And plays irradiate the world

With untarnished love and devotion

For they deserve to reap

The harvests of good works

They’re noble inheritors of Mother Earth.

Go far away to the remotest desert

Where you shall slumber forever

You pestilent idea of Atomic War!

And may the champion of the Light

Smash all Bombs—abominable icons of Lucifer—

To inutility inasmuch as Life

Has been unto everyone endowed

Not plainly to vaporize

In the hot blazing ovens

Of detonated thermonuclear devices.

[Writ. 04 June 1988, Proj. 8, Quezon City, M.Manila.]