To pluck the eyes that rest beneath thy brow,
And celebrate red fountains in a sonnet,
or heckle farmer’s labor at his plow,
in field that hath such trammeled soil upon it!
I wonder, Shakespeare, didst thou never see
A napalm blossom sprung from human skin,
Or noble stick of Nobel TNT
That hath such fire encapsulated in?
In images of violence we seek,
Through gasoline and knives and powder bums,
For cities built and sacked, and havoc wreaked,
By reptile mind that, all unseeing, yearns.
A damsel with a rifle in a vision once I saw,
O Xanadu, thy twice-five-miles are trampled into straw.
—“The Modern Era”3
—bascal edward de towaji lutui, age 10
3 Note: Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, smokeless powder, and the blasting cap, but not TNT. —ed.