There are facts, hard-truths, inevitabilities
both misery and the impulse to avoid it
hang over as a certainty
a body that wishes for an ideal approach
a way of going about the human briefness
which might integrate each of these for-sures
and most-definitelys, without attempting to divide
that which is good from the rest
as that impulse seems to starve one for death
in the hope that on the other side
something might forgive the absurdity
of a bracketed timeline
with its unavoidable chronological awful moments
and perhaps this is why history is a dangerous subject,
like literature, in which morality and effects
are held up to causes and endings
which stir patriotism, fear, reminiscences
casting into shadow the past, into dazzling the future
splitting lines, parsing words, primarily to course
the correct path for a thing that apparently
only happens once, without doubt always.
Roman Ryan 