History Lesson

 

All of that twentieth century history

went in, piled up;

from childhood, it stacked:

the cold war, Bay of Pigs, coup d’etats,

dictators, famines, invasions,

Vietnam, Congo, Falklands, Belfast, Kosovo;

treaties, broken treaties, military exercises,

nuclear arsenals, on and on

and we got wise

and understood that nations are hungry

and savage;

there were always answers and we knew them

from a young age.

And the great page turned, twentieth to twenty first:

still they came: Darfur, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan,

invasions, piracy, terrorist attacks, revolutions

until we know nothing,

and therefore

on it goes.