Repeating History - Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

Repeating History

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

We are all a history.
Redacted, invented
History of our innocence
And their guilt.

We carry culture, albeit
Ignorant of the original
Root, a curious explorer
Into darkness, into

Separation from a whole
Which held us, hewed a
Path toward empathy, a forked
Road now, moving

Away from each other,
Ourselves.

	- Rebecca del Rio