Dr. Alice M. Stewart is a British medical doctor and a distinguished epidemilogist, who for 27 years conducted scientific research in social medicine at Oxford University. Her work first established the connection between childhood leukemia and fetal X-rays. She has continued to look at the effects of low-level radiation on the health of children and adults.ALICE STEWART Using the language of science
she showed us the steep curve
mysterious on the graph
pointing to casualties of a certain kind.
Only over time, did the idea
come to her, hidden
under this curve early deaths
of another kind produced a different
invisible curve
making it one long slope
of dying.
All this proceeded in
a now to be calculated way
after the first explosion
began the chain of events,
diminishments, loss,
collapses, cancers
the disappearance of
family, friends.
Genetics? she said
The children?
The ones born later.
Yes, but that
is another study.
Perhaps next time,
another lecture.
The consequences
grim as they are
are sterling clear.
There to see in the numbers.
One might easily
infer
the stories, the
telling
blank spaces.
Susan Griffin
Susan Griffin is the author of Pornography and Silence, Woman and Nature, Rape, the Politics of Consciousness, and the Emmy Award Winning play, "Voices". Her book of poetry Unremembered Country won the prestigious California Commonwealth's Clube's Silver Medal. Her recent play "Thicket" premiered in May of 1992 in San Francisco. A Chorus of Stones, The Private Life of War, was published by Doubleday and Company October, 1992.