Coming out of the station he expected
To bump into the cripple who had clomped,
Bright pencils trailing, across his dreams
For fifteen years. Before setting out
He was ready to offer both his legs,
His arms, his sleepless eyes. But it seemed
There was no need: it looked a healthy town,
The people gay, the new street dancing
In the famous light. Even the War Museum
With its photos of the blast, the well-mapped
Rubble, the strips of blackened skin,
Moved one momentarily. After all,
From the window one could watch picknickers
Plying chopsticks as before, the children
bombing carp with rice balls. Finding not
What he had feared, he went home cured at last.
Yet minutes after getting back in bed
A wood leg started clomping, a thousand
Eyes leapt wild, and once again he hurtled
Down a road paved white with flesh. On waking
He knew he had gone too late to the wrong
Town, and that until his own legs numbed
And eyes went dim with age, somewhere
A fire would burn that no slow tears could quench.