The Library of Maps
#40THE MIRROR BOAT AND HIROSHIMA

Once upon a time,
From the Island of Mijama,
In the Hiroshima Bay,
Could be seen
On the horizon
The Mirror Boat
—its sails
reflecting the water,
and its deck the sky—
As it glided
Back and forth
From one shore to the other
Until one day,
The crescent moon
Fell from the sky,
Shattering the boat.

The next day,
Three divers,
Swimming down to the wreck,
Retrieved one fragment each.

The first mirror
Reflected
A distant planet.

Sometimes,
Skeins of molten metal
Formed strange descending whirlpools
On the surface of the mirror,
While smells of toxic gas
Seeped out
From the mirror’s back.

At other times,
The mirror would become
Too hot to touch,
And,
Emitting an intense light,
Temporarily blinded its owner.

The second mirror
Reflected only water,
So still and calm
That,
Sitting languidly
Before the mirror,
Its owner
Often fell to dreaming.

Her attendant,
Eager to record in mirror writing
What transpired in the woman’s sleep,
Waited patiently.
But her notebook
Was always empty,
Despite the fact
That the attendant could tell,
From the violent motions
Of the dreamer’s restless body,
That much was happening.

The third mirror
Remained unchangingly dark.

Upon the owners’ deaths,
These three mirrors
Were bequeathed to the Library of Maps,
And installed there in the Room of Mirrors.

For a time,
The mirrors were stubbornly resistant
To the Gazers assigned to study them;
Finally, however,
Images emerged.

In the first mirror,
A Gazer discerned
Scenes of a cave and five underground rivers—
surely the five rivers of death
wending their way through Hades?—
And
Another Gazer
Identified the cave
as that belonging to Amaterasu,
the cave
into which,
darkening the entire world,
the Japanese sun goddess retreated.

The second mirror
Remained empty
Until the moment of death,
When those who gazed
Saw themselves in the mirror
About to enter the underworld.

The third mirror
Showed the cycle,
Over and over again,
Of a single day and place—
August 6, 1945, Hiroshima.

To the side of this mirror
Was a computer
Where one could read first-hand accounts
Of survivors of that day—
the Hibakusha (“Those who have seen hell”).

Among the hundred
to be recorded forty years later in 1985
were
Hiroshi Sawachika
Yosaku Mikami
Isao Kita
Akira Onogi
Hiroko Fukada
Akihiro Takahashi
Kinue Tomoyasu
Yoshitaka Kawamoto
Toshiko Saeki
Akiko Takakura
Mamoru Yukihiro
Taeko Teramae
Takehiko Sakai
Yoshito Matsushige
And Hatchobori Streetcar Survivors
http://www.inicom.com/hibakusha

by Moira Roth
Written 10/02–03/03 (on plane from San Francisco to Tokyo)–revised in Japan—and completed 10/15/03 (Berkeley)