“For Hitler, the German defeat demonstrated that something was crooked in the whole structure of the world; it was the proof that Jews had mastered the methods of nature.”
Timothy Snyder, Black Earth
They say that only history
can teach us to improve.
To not repeat mistakes,
to win and win.
When grass has grown on battlefields
can you sense the taste of blood in soil?
Have you smelled cremation fumes?
Who says that past has not been faked?
That bronze or marble tells the truth?
Do we even see how poppies are like wounds?
That war can not be won, just lost the least.
When you cannot smell the rot or gangrene,
hear the blasts and ricochets;
when all the veterans have passed away.
we see the paradox
that history can make us blind
repeating old mistakes.
Rommy ask us to use a sentence from a book at toads to start a poem. Mine come from a book by Timothy Snyder telling the history of the holocaust. There has been a lot of discussion of history lately. I think we need to dig deep, there is nothing more than simplistic historicism.
August 25, 2017