Gadget and a poem
2019
A large spherical sculpture, (1 metre diam) refers to The Gadget, The Manhattan Project’s laboratory euphemism for the atomic bomb detonated in the Jornada del Muerto in on July 16th 1945.
A Gadget is installed alongside a framed print, A Poem composed of elements of the two following texts: Holy Sonnet X1V by John Donne and Plutonium Ode by John Donne.
Lead physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer named the atomic test Trinity in an odd and disturbing reference to John Donne’s poem Holy Sonnet XIV, which imagines a man and world violently remade: Allen Ginsberg wrote Plutonium Ode in 1978.
Holy Sonnet XIV: Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God
Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,<
but is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor even chaste, except you ravish me.
Thirty-three years after the Trinity test, on the 16th of July 1978, poet Allen Ginsberg published his nuclear protest poem Plutonian Ode, excerpted here:
Plutonuim Ode
What new element before us unborn in nature?
Is there a new thing under the Sun?
First penned unmindful by Doctor Seaborg with poisonous hand, named for Death's planet through the
sea beyond Uranus whose chthonic ore fathers this magma-teared Lord of Hades, Sire of avenging Furies,
billionaire Hell-King.
Radioactive Nemesis were you there at the beginning, black dumb tongueless unsmelling blast of Disillusion?
I manifest your Baptismal Word after four billion years.
I guess your birthday in Earthling Night, I salute your dreadful presence last majestic as the Gods.
Father Whitman I celebrate a matter that renders Self oblivion!
Grand Subject that annihilates inky hands & pages' prayers, old orators' inspired Immortalities,
I begin your chant, openmouthed exhaling into spacious sky over silent mills at Hanford, Savannah River,
Rocky Flats, Pantex, Burlington, Albuquerque.
I yell thru Washington, South Carolina, Colorado, Texas, Iowa, New Mexico,
Where nuclear reactors create a new Thing under the Sun, where Rockwell war-plants fabricate this death
stuff trigger in nitrogen baths.
Manzano Mountain boasts to store its dreadful decay through two hundred forty millenia while our Galaxy
spirals around its nebulous core.
One microgram inspired to one lung, ten pounds of heavy metal dust adrift slow motion over grey Alps
the breadth of the planet, how long before your radiance speeds blight and death to sentient beings?
Enter my body or not I carol my spirit inside you, Unapproachable Weight,
O heavy heavy Element awakened I vocalize your consciousness to six worlds.
I chant your absolute Vanity. Yeah monster of Anger birthed in fear.
O most Ignorant matter ever created unnatural to Earth!
Delusion of metal empires!
Destroyer of lying Scientists! Devourer of covetous Generals, Incinerator of Armies & Melter of Wars!
Judgement of judgements, Divine Wind over vengeful nations, Molester of Presidents, Death-Scandal of Capital politics!
Ah civilizations stupidly industrious!
Canker-Hex on multitudes learned or illiterate!
Manufactured Spectre of human reason!
I call your name with hollow vowels, I psalm your Fate close by,
my breath near deathless ever at your side
to Spell your destiny, I set this verse prophetic on your mausoleum walls to seal you up Eternally with Diamond Truth!
O doomed Plutonium.