President Truman was a human,
as nice a guy as apple pie;
in ‘45 he sent a bomber,
Enola Gay, into the sky.
Colonel Tibbets flew the mission,
named his plane after his Mom;
inside, lying in a cradle,
the Little Boy atomic bomb.
Miles high over Hiroshima,
safe from anti-aircraft guns,
Tibbets dropped the nuclear weapon,
its airburst like a thousand suns.
In the flash of the explosion,
in the fireball’s deadly pall,
sixty thousand people perished,
their shadows etched on city walls.
In the man-made sunburst
birds ignited in mid-air,
flies, mosquitoes, family pets
shrivelled in the blinding glare.
And now Paul Warfields Tibbets
has died aged ninety two ’
claimed he never had a sleepless night
since the mission that he flew.
The man who turned a city
into cinders and debris
is to have his ashes scattered
on the surface of the sea.
Perhaps they’ll fall like snow
on a Trident submarine
with a hundred Hiroshimas
in its nuclear magazine.