I
Italy
Like Cicero,
He found Archimedes’ tomb in Sicily.
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/Archimedes.html

And probably like Cicero,
Standing before its ruins
(with its still remaining fragment
of the cylinder-cone),
He meditated on the Sand-Counter,
On Archimedes’ desire
To find a way,
A method,
To count how many grains of sand there were in the universe.

Like Giordano Bruno, too,
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/Bruno_Giordano.html

He found himself later in Rome,
In the Vatican Library,

Surprised by its vast collections—
of Archimedes and Euclid,
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/Euclid.html
in Greek and Latin translations—

Surprised by Ptolemy’s astronomy and geography—
a rash librarian had allowed him
into the Vatican Library late at night
to roam freely, and to finger
a ninth-century Greek parchment of Ptolemy’s Almagest
and a later thirteenth-century Latin translation
(based on a previous century’s Arabic one)—

He read until dawn
About the Greek’s accounts of planets and stars
In a world where all revolved around Earth.
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/Ptolemy.html

Equally, he was surprised by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi’s Tadhkira,
Fascinated by his open-air observatory,
Its library and instruments,
And his bold revisions of Ptolemy,
In fourteenth-century Maragha,
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/Al-Tusi_Nasir.html

And by Matteo Ricci,
http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/jmac/sj/scientists/ricci.htm
Explaining in Chinese
Notions of European astronomy
In 1610 …

It all seemed so free,
So nomadic in its century-long wanderings of ideas
About time and space
Through different languages and cultures,

Until,
Jolted,
The Young Astronomer remembered Bruno’s death
(after his sojourns in France and England,
after his hermetic thoughts about shadows and memory)
At the hands of the Italian Inquisition,
In 1600.

II
The United States
The strange trail of the Young Astronomer
Took him to libraries and archives
In Washington D.C., Chicago, and Los Alamos
Where he read
Once-secret documents about “the gadget.”

He read the May 10–11, 1945, minutes
Of the two meetings
Of the Target Committee in Los Alamos,
In Robert Oppenheimer’s office,
Discussing the five possible targets in Japan.
(Should Kyoto, they consulted one another, be one?)
http://www.dannen.com/decision/targets.html

He read the June 11, 1945, Franck Report
Written by Chicago scientists,
Advising against unannounced attacks,
Recommending instead
First a demonstration to the Allies
In an uninhabited area.
http://www.dannen.com/decision/franck.html

He read the June 16, 1945,
“ Recommendations on the Immediate Use of Nuclear Weapons,”
In which Oppenheimer and Fermi,
Compton and Lawrence,
Argued for the bomb.
http://www.dannen.com/decision/scipanel.html

He read the Bard Memorandum, June 27, 1945—
by Ralph A. Bard, Undersecretary of the Navy, to Secretary of War Stimson—
Advising a preliminary warning,
“ Say two or three days in advance of use.”
http://www.dannen.com/decision/bardmemo.html

He read petitions of July 13 and July 17, 1945,
To the President of the United States,
Against the imminent bombing
(staring at the signatures,
imagining the scientists’ anxious exchanges with one another).
http://www.dannen.com/decision/oakridge1.html
http://www.dannen.com/decision/45-07-17.html

He read—
in folder 5B, Manhattan Project File '42 to '46,
in the U.S. National Archives, Record group 77—
The Official Bombing Order, July 25, 1945.
http://www.dannen.com/decision/handy.html

And he read
That at 8:15 a.m.
On August 6, 1945,
An atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.