Tuesday, November 20, 2018

There were those


There were those
who paid attention
to the old
texts which meant
nothing to most.

In those texts
the story of our errors
our incompleteness 
and the danger we wove
around us, called Hubris
by the Greeks.  The freaks
in the class know, but others
of you who read my words now
didn't know the elders’ words
were like gold:  this civilization
will end.  Greed and monstrous

ignorance crowns every empire.
But you didn't get it.  You
wrote notes about 
the football game
drew pictures of Eagles
swooping from the mountains.
Nothing is lost 
to the old ghosts
of your notebooks

inhabiting the hallways.
Of Herodotus they
still whisper and the
wars, the wars, the
wars we went over.  But
there is nothing
important there.  The teachers 
taught to atomic dust.  
For those of us
who remember
it is late.


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