ELEGY FOR MARY WALSH

ELEGY FOR MARY WALSH
The atomic bomb was developed under the code name of the Manhattan Project.
Those involved with the project died within three decades of cancer.
—to Jane Walsh Reilly

Grandma said:
Julia took the kids:
Mary, her sister, and the boy twins
to Colorado for a better education.

There wasn't much in Nevada,

and there was some trouble with the marriage.

My grandmother's half-cousin Bill was a handsome man.

He was the number-one son

and ran the Home Ranch in Austin, Nevada.

Julia O'Leary came out from Bantry to marry Bill.

The family was deadset against the marriage,

They were first cousins, you know.

And Mary's sister was brilliant too

but she was institutionalized in Denver.

Darwin's parents were first cousins too.

There was something off about his sister as well.

It works that way with marriages between first cousins

genius and idiot: flip sides of the same coin.

Maybe that's the Almighty's way of keeping things separate.

It was during the war years, I remember,

Mary was chosen right out of high school

to work on a secret project for the government.

When they were testing for mathematics and science,

Mary got one of the highest scores in the country

and she went to work back east.

It wasn't until later we found out

it was the Manhattan Project

one of the government's best kept secrets.

No one knew anything about it.

We didn't hear from her for years,

and learned of her death announcement

when it appeared in the papers.

Here I was, first cousins to her,

and even I didn't know.

There was one short line about her work.

I heard, all who worked on it died,

but no one blamed the project.

The first time I saw Mary at Home Ranch

was back in the '20s the little toddler

standing by the adobe wall

and Julia talking, talking, talking

I was dazed because that child,

her voice was like a bell.

She was so perfect,

I thought I'd seen an angel.

And Julia, looking at me so quizzically

That was the pity of it. I didn't explain.

And her, Mary, clinging to her mother's skirts

as if she'd done something wrong,

crying hysterically,

Mommy, mommy, I'm not a bad girl. Mommy.

9/83

I found this scrap in our telephone table in Forest Knolls, which leads me to believe that the origin of this poem is before 1983. But the final version has that date, and so it s. Note added 2015 & longer first typed draft added 10/2016. Bits and pieces.