Hiroshima Day is marked every year on 6 August, the day in 1945 on which the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima in Japan.
The film Oppenheimer explores some of the ethical questions related to this event. Others have questioned its rights and wrongs since 1945.
The following poem/hymn was written in response to the photo of a little boy rescued from a bombed building in Allepo in Syria. Equally it is evocative of children everywhere suffering whenever we settle our disputes through war or violence.
It speaks as much to our vision of a destroyed city as to the cries of a single child:
A bloodied child foreshadowed by a cross,
both share their taste of evil and of loss,
and when will people ever live and learn
that hurt and harm is all that war can earn?
We hold our breath in horror as we view
this scene forever old, forever new;
amid the dust and rubble strewn around
a child cries out and parents can’t be found.
How long, O Lord we cry, each hollow word,
our pleas of peace increasingly absurd?
Good God, forgive us when inaction’s voice
speaks loudly of our violent, hurtful choice.
Words: Andrew Pratt (born 1948) © 18 August 2016 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England, www.stainer.co.uk.
Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.
Metre: 10.10.10.10.
Suggested tunes: these words were written with the tune EVENTIDE (StF 141) in mind. Singing the Faith plus suggests these alternatives: THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP (StF 640) and – perhaps surprisingly – WOODLANDS (StF 186)
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