Sin is Dead

“Yet even I have never heard anything as horrible as this.”

—The Priest in Kurosawa’s film Rashomon

After they dropped a bomb from their B-29,

there was no more sin. Imagine the smoldering

bodies of the dead, and all those homes blown in.

So many cruel calculations had transpired before

and have since, numbers crunched in Washington

and Berlin, lives crossed out by chancellors and presidents—

but to incinerate that many thousands with one pen stroke

was an unimaginable volition, in ethical terms.

Which is why our notion of ethics changed

on that August 6, with that single stroke. Like Einstein

and his theory to physics. But the opposite of relativity,

since after that, we had a new absolute, against which

no single act can compare. Does it exist anymore,

the notion of sin? Doing good exists, but not sin.

About the author

David Salner’s latest poetry collection is The Stillness of Certain Valleys (Broadstone Books, 2019). His stories and poems have appeared in many journals including Threepenny Review, Ploughshares, Beloit Poetry Journal, Carve, and The Moth (U.K.). His first novel, A Place to Hide, will appear in 2021. He worked as iron ore miner, steelworker, machinist; now as librarian.

Visit his website at www.DSalner.wix.com/salner