4 poems by Masayuki Tanabe

The Little Girl in a Bomb Shelter

As Putin’s war rages
Like the fire of the netherworld
A little girl sings “Let it go”
In a bomb shelter
To lift the dampened spirits
Of the people there
If I could speak to her heart
I would say
“Keep singing brave child
Don’t let your heavenly voice be silenced
And encourage others to burst into song
No matter how infernal life gets
You are the Anne Frank of your generation
The world needs people like you
To inspire them
To douse the flames of their indifference
History will remember you
As a bastion of hope
And an emblem of courage
If you don’t let dire circumstances
Slay the beautiful cherub within you”





A Thousand Paper Cranes

At the Hiroshima peace memorial  
A girl named Sadako Sasaki has been immortalized  
Her statue holds a golden crane  
And the plaque at the base echoes her dream for all of us  
It says “This is our cry  
This is our prayer  
Peace in the world”  
Sadako was two years old when the atomic bomb  
Vaporized many human beings  
And caused a sea of blackened corpses  
She survived but the assault of atom bomb disease  
Viciously commenced in her body when she was twelve  
But she made a decision in the hospice  
That inspired many all over the globe to fight for change  
With fierce determination she started a goal  
To make a thousand paper cranes  
Because in the land of the rising sun there is a belief  
That this artistic objective will cause a wish to be granted  
Her wish was for a world without the horror of bloodshed  
She passed away near the completion of the origami birds  
However her classmates finished her goal  
And to guide her spirit to blissful eternity  
A candle lit lantern was placed on a river  
As the moon danced to a serene melody  
In Japan this hauntingly beautiful ceremony is called Toro Nagashi  
Sadako is the embodiment of the hope for a better world  
I see her face on the myriad of white poppies  
That bloom in the gardens of peace workers                                                   After children are slain in war  






The Ghost at Auschwitz

When I visited the Auschwitz site in Poland
Forty years ago
The phantom of a ten-year-old girl
Appeared before me in the crematorium
She said to me
“Hello my name is Liesel
I died on May 5th 1943
That day I was relieved
When I entered “the shower room”
Because I wanted hot water and soap
To cleanse my body
But soon I felt a terrible pain in my chest
And I started vomiting blood
Like the women next to me
Then panic ensued
Everyone was screaming
In a blood-curdling way
When they realized it was a gas chamber”
Liesel’s story made me weep profusely
“I hate Germans!” I cried
“No No No don’t hate
Look around you
Hate caused all of this
German people today
Don’t have holocaust blood on their hands
What the Nazis did horrifies them” she said
Liesel hugged me then she vanished
And I never saw her again.






Hiroshima Photos

When men, women and children were vaporized
By the atomic bomb
Ghostly images of them were imprinted on walls and steps
When I saw photos of these nuclear shadows
At the Hiroshima Museum
It appeared that they were frozen in time
But I quickly realized this is an illusion
For in reality they have all vanished from the earth forever
The shadows of my pacifist parents
Who refused to deify the Japanese Emperor
Are in one of those photos
When I saw this I wept
Because it was like reading a powerful antiwar message
For the world
That Mom and Dad left behind

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Masayuki Tanabe is a long-time Canadian poet whose parents came from Japan. He lives in Burlington, Ontario, and works in Oakville. He writes poetry in a fictitious first-person point of view, thus putting himself in the shoes of those caught up in wars, affected in various ways. He also writes poems of love and hope. His poetry books are titles A Garden of Ecletic Poems, and My Voice, My Pain, My Love.  Masayuki enjoys music, movies and walks in nature, as well as reading at local open mic events.

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