Past Lessons
Past Lessons
by Bryon Slack
”Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes… Families are torn apart: men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find their parents have disappeared.” – Anne Frank
My escape velocity was attained
by four jet engines screaming
like the lament in my heart
for the land of my birth,
even as it took ten hours
of flight to escape the gravity
of the singularity it had become.
The wheel has turned,
and now the bells
of the Westertoren
echo down canals,
through time,
and my ears can hear
where History begins to rhyme,
but now the oppressors
wear the arm band,
frozen water over stars
while half the country cheers,
reveling in their cruelty.
Their goalposts sit on rollers,
wheeled on demand
to wherever the line lands today,
moonwalking in branded blinders
to avoid the sight
of the precipice behind them,
their ears stuffed
with false equivalence
to not hear the klaxon
sounding the alarm.
My fingers trace the face
of a golden coin bearing a name
set quietly in a door frame
of a quiet cafè—
a silent acknowledgement
of the lessons they've refused
to learn.