The Prize

Poems by Gary Geddes

[Editor’s Note: On this occasion, Hiroshima Day 2024, poet Gary Geddes has shared with readers of The British Columbia Review work from his collection Flying Blind (Frederiction: Goose Lane Editions, 1998)]

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The Prize

What we don’t need, the faces seem to say,

is another tourist with aching heart 

and counterweights for feet. I inch past 

twisted girders, photographic 

evidence and charred relics of the A-bomb

exhibit, then leave to place a salmon-coloured rose 

on the monument to Sadako. Six hundred 

and forty-four folded paper cranes 

did not protect her from white cells 

warring in her blood.

Light moves through the exposed

struts of the shattered Dome.

A young girl reads a novel by the river

where a string of rental boats fan out

in the confused current. I can’t stop thinking

of Akiko Sato, who died nursing her infant

and left nothing but a slip bearing marks 

of black rain. Or the boy survived

only by a metal clasp and scrap of leather

on a pedestal. The Japanese character 

embossed on Akira Sakanoue’s belt buckle 

resembles a beetle. I carry my rough approximation

back through the gleaming downtown,

where shops are full of Italian silks 

and the pedestrian crosswalks are playing

a computerized version of “Coming Through the Rye.”

The clerk at the hotel smiles at my calligraphy

and draws the correct version in an upright position

in the margins of my notebook. Shou, 

she pronounces. But what does it mean,

I ask, knowing the two characters for the city,

hiro and shima, mean broad island. She’s 

as efficient as she is beautiful, flesh and bones

so palpably there beneath the immaculate folds

of the uniform.  If a body kiss a body, 

need a body cry. She checks her dictionary, 

smiles again. Just as I thought,

she says, turning the open pages towards me,

the character, in English, means prize.

O, Akira, Akiko, I languish in the body 

and its fires. If I were a Buddhist, 

I’d say, without hesitation, show me the road 

that leads beyond desire, or

settle for silence. But I see a desperate

paper-wager, a young mother

yearning to give suck, and a boy

so anxious to serve in the Emperor’s

demolition squad—belt buckle 

shined, kamikaze of the dust brigade—

he scrubs his small round face until it hurts.

One word after another, reaching out

unstable as molecules, able to take

just so much heat. A spit 

of moisture whistles 

briefly in the kiln, 

is gone.

[Editor’s Note: Gary Geddes will read the poem above and the selection below at a memorial ceremony for Hiroshima in Duncan, BC on August 6, 2024]

Reading Akio Chida’s Translations 

of the Poems of Toshiko Takada

on the Train from Hiroshima

to Yokohama

She understood the sisterhood

of suffering and saw the Band-Aid 

on a boy in Paris as a badge 

of honour.

Her finest discriminations

were made on rainy days 

under an umbrella.

Comfort of a dead mother’s

thin grey hands, faint unreal goodbyes           

of those who’ve yet to learn

what that word signifies.

Melancholy inspired by desert heat 

and a donkey, time passing as it does

outside the train window,

mists of Okayama, brown tile roofs 

streaking past to disappear

in the dark of tunnels.

Poems

so transparent you can feel the ghosts

of children pass through them,

children you might have seen approaching

the bank building where the man

left his shadow forever

on the stone steps, or skipping

along the T-shape of the Aioi Bridge

that morning as the sun withdrew its savings

from the dazzling waters.

[Editor’s note: Gary Geddes wishes to convey his hope that the selections above help readers to remember the costs of war.]

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Gary Geddes has written and edited more than fifty books of poetry, fiction, drama, non-fiction, criticism, translation and anthologies and been the recipient of a dozen national and international literary awards, including the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Americas region), the Lt. Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence, and the Gabriela Mistral Prize from the government of Chile. He lives on Thetis Island.

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-25: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an online book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, Maria Tippett, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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