George Gunn – In Atomic City
IN ATOMIC CITY
The year is late
it is the middle of June
that sweet season
with all things great & pleasing
Atomic City is getting ready for the end
the hotels are full
but not with tourists
Atomic City does not love tourism
anyway tourists are allergic
to our indifference
instead the bars & restaurants
are packed with bored men
who are dredging the harbour
or decommissioning some part
of the reactor
the posters outside the Information Centre
alliterate the official poetry
diminished dismantled
delivered destroyed
demolished decommissioned down
as if in a sequence of songs by Poulenc
the graffiti poets of Atomic City
have added dereliction destruction
depopulation depression disinformation
deception decommission
I add war & corruption
as by day the workmen argue & swear
in temporary buildings
erected on site
& around the town
the prospects of independence
& a different enemy
have brought us to the edge of ruin
some politicians fact-find for a day
about investment in renewables
the crystal meth addicts Sun themselves anxiously
in the occasional optimistic afternoon
their obsessive banter echoes
off the industrial units surrounding the housing estate
as if their hysteria must also be imprisoned
it is one o clock
& where have you been
& is the harbour deeper yet
& how long before it will silt up
& why don’t you speak?
Out in the bay a red ship lies at anchor
it has been there for two weeks now
some say that it is a relief for the Faroe freighter
but this is Atomic City
so you never know
something about that red stripe on the black funnel
the way the mid-cargo deck bulges
in a menacing heave of hydraulics
& that its name is so tiny
no-one can read it without binoculars
like the unmarked transit vans
parked secretly at night
around guest houses
like suckling pigs
how they add to this aching
how even the lighthouse is untrue
it sits blind on its headland
its signal stolen
by the winking eye
at the end of the new ferry pier
how enlightenment has brought us here
through the tern-shriek of progress & civilization
of land enclosure & clearance
of the clap trap of two world wars
& the missile pointing stand off that followed
how we lapped it up
& swallowed it down
huddled together on the top
of fulmar-crested cliffs in a laager
of cheap Authority housing
where the plague-ghosts haunt the cement
& tidy gardens of sixty years of nothing
to finally meet the conundrum head on
the system that was meant to save us
we now have to save
the beach is marked by the tracks
of the radiation monitoring vehicles
two children play at the tides edge
with their wet dog they run to their mother
who carries a Tesco’s plastic bag
behind them the castle
which the Sinclairs burned down in the fifties
stands like a sandstone domino
out at sea terns dive for mackerel
the orange floats of lobster creels nod on the swell
a young boy in a blue shirt
peddles his new bike
along the lower beach walkway
what’s left of the dayshift
pours into Atomic City
all this under the early Summer Sun
the boy peddles his bike back
again and again
three girls walk along the higher path
talking loudly over their personal headphones
beside the library is parked
a mobile decontamination unit
up on a nearby roof
two men without masks
grind off all the excess asbestos
George Gunn 2012