New Poetry by Paul Jeffcutt

Visit Nagasaki *

The Portuguese were first.

We traded silks

for copper and silver.

Their preachers roused peasants.

We crushed the rebellion

and banished all.

The Dutch came.

We consigned them to a trading post,

storehouses rich in books and sugar.

We built a causeway to the West:

docks, ships, aircraft,

the machinery of empire.

Munitions factories at the limit,

conscript housewives

and schoolboys.

A gap in the clouds,

one aeroplane.

Hibakusha rise.

* Whilst Japan was a closed society, this port city was open to the world. Hibakusha are survivors of the atom bombs. Their testimonies have been recorded and can be heard by visitors to Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

- © Paul Jeffcutt 2022

Paul Jeffcutt has won thirty three awards for poetry in competitions in Ireland, the UK and the USA.  He has two collections: ‘The Skylark’s Call’, Dempsey & Windle (2020) and ‘Latch’, Lagan Press (2010). Paul is widely published in literary journals and anthologies. He has recently completed his first novel.