During the Vietnam years, amid the angry resistance of particular antiwar campaigns and actions, writers turned away from the subject of nuclear annihilation, but the fear of such annihilation never subsided. It resurfaces in Charles Martin’s “Terminal Colloquy,” first published in Room for Error in 1978, after the war was finally over. A virtuosic villanelle, Martin’s poem adroitly and implacably recognizes that in the face of “the blinding flash” there will be nothing whatsoever to say, not even for poets.
A native of New York, Martin (b. 1942) attended Fordham and SUNY–Buffalo and is a distinguished poet and translator, three times nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the winner of many other prizes and fellowships. From 2005 until 2009 he was poet-in-residence at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, then as in the late 1960s hospitable to antiwar writers.
O where will you go when the blinding flash
Scatters the seed of a million suns?
And what will you do in the rain of ash?
I’ll draw the blinds and pull down the sash,
And hide from the light of so many noons.
But how will it be when the blinding flash
Disturbs your body’s close-knit mesh,
Bringing to light your lovely bones?
What will you wear in the rain of ash?
I will go bare without my flesh,
My vertebrae will click like stones.
Ah. But where will you dance when the blinding flash
Settles the city in a holy hush?
I will dance alone among the ruins.
Ah. And what will you say to the rain of ash?
I will be charming. My subtle speech
Will weave close turns and counter turns—
No. What will you say to the rain of ash?
Nothing, after the blinding flash.