Lots and Lots
Tsutomu and Isamu—
Those names were popular among boys back then
But we weren’t even paying attention when
One of Osamu’s creations, our number one author,
Crossed the sea and changed
His name to Astro
Hmmmm… Think about it
To tell the truth
It didn’t even come across as some cruel joke
When Atom
The boy hero came calling
From the islands where the atomic bombs once fell
When did we realize
What his name really meant?
Hmmmm… Think about it
I wanted to be friends with Uran
This is no cruel joke
All of us kids were that way back then
Each one of us with an atomic reactor in our hearts
Maybe we were the ones who changed his name
Calling him
Atom
When we called him that
We cut off
The root
Of the word
For the future, for the universe
For our own peaceful uses, as a nation that had suffered through the bomb
I don’t want to blame
The young Tezuka
The adults wanting to sell dreams
The children wanting to lose themselves in dreams
Went right along too
With his inklings and the iron-arms
Like filings to a magnet
Lots of them
And lots of them
He would not have been able to draw him
If that were really his name
He could not depict him as Genko, a girl robot
That was what we needed
Right then
A new nuance
For the future, for the universe
For our twisted peace
The name “Atom”
Split off of the atom
And the atomic bomb
—The reason his power source
Was swept out to sea one day
Was because it was not included
It had been cut off from the start
The language on these islands
Gets rid of roots, cuts them off with katakana
Long before the earthquake
If so, then
It was okay to use that name
So that’s why
His name, all sparkling clean
Was used
Lots
And lots
Until smeared with filth and mud
What we have are not fifty-four reactors
We have fifty-four Atoms standing there at the water’s edge
Of the four that the waves swallowed
Three blew themselves up, one’s innards failed
The jets in their legs
Rained down iodine, cesium, strontium
His little brother Cobalt chased after him
Through fields, mountains, towns
Among people, livestock, butterflies
The furnaces in the three Atoms’ hearts
Melted down and collapsed
Making
His little sister Uran seethe, the fission wouldn’t stop
Professor Ochanomizu and Dr. Tenma were killed
Into the sea poured
An accumulation of tears
From his kind heart
Some of the other Atoms
Also stood atop fault lines
Some grew old, their metallic exhaustion began
And then
Even though we shut them down
We still couldn’t find a place to get rid of them
This is our one and only world
Not a manga in which we can blow things up in space
There he was
Mulling over the laws of robotics
“I was born to make people happy”
Perhaps all this hurt him more than humanity
*
At the edge of the water
Fifty-four severed heads
Four of them
Eyes lowered, noses lowered, piling upon penance day after day
One lowering countless children of science on a land of withered trees
One killing countless children of science in a sea without salt or moon
One surprised as it measures the dead Atom’s legs and the living Atom’s eyes
On its scale of tangled serpents only to find they weigh the same
One dead and still sicker than before
Coughing within its concrete sarcophagus
*
A single butterfly crosses the Becquerel Straits.
*
A face appears below the ground
The sad face of a sick man
The grass sprouts and sways
Countless hairs begin to tremble
From the sad, sick surface
The sad face of Atom appears
Tears dripping
Dripping tears
At this moment
Thin roots
Hairy roots
Cilia from root tips
Cilia covered in faint hair
They will grow, won’t they?
We will make them grow, won’t we?
In the soil that is the language of these islands
In the deep darkness at its base
An object mired in karma
Will he ever
Be allowed
To rest in peace?