Repeating History - Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

Repeating History

In Krakow, on the hour
A trumpeter recalls
an interrupted call, warning invasion,
The alarm arrested by an arrow
piercing the psyche
of a people. Repeat

Everywhere, injuries
enshrined, history felt
Repeatedly, wounds
remembered. The wounded,
dead forgotten by the bowman,
marksman, indifferent
bomber. Forgotten by the one
who ordered the arrow.

We repeat, but cannot
delete fear, erase blood.
We repeat slights and stabs,
rapes and rage of the ages.

All of us are history
Redacted, invented
Stories of our innocence
And their guilt.

We carry our persistent culture, 
Our ignorance of a fragile
Original root—a curious explorer
Into darkness, into

Separation from a whole
Which held us. Hewing a
Path toward more, a forked
Road, we move

Away from each other,
Away from ourselves.

	- Rebecca del Rio