GHOSTSby The Marukis
It was a procession of ghosts.
Clothes burned in an instant. Hands, faces, breasts swelled in purple welts
that burst and left skin hanging like rags.
A procession of ghosts, with their hands held before them. They pushed on,
dragging their burned bodies, falling and piling onto one another, groaning, and dying.
The temperature reached six thousand degrees at the center of the blast.
A human shadow was etched on stone steps. Did that body vaporize? Was it
blown away? There is no one to tell us what it was like near the hypocenter.
There was no way to distinguish one charred, blistered face from another.
Voices became parched and hoarse. Friends would introduce themselves, but still
not recognize each other.
One lone child slept innocently, with unburned skin. Perhaps it survived,
sheltered by its mother's breast. We hope that this is one child who rose and
lived on. The word picture, "Ghosts," was added later by the Marukis to comment on their first mural, completed in 1950. Whereas Iri believed that art should speak for itself, Toshi argued that "words can reach places paintings cannot reach."
......................... ReferenceFrom: The Hiroshima Murals: The Art of iri Maruki and Toshi Maruki. Eds. John W. Dower and Junkerman. Tokyo, New York: Kodansha International, 1985; 29.
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