There are too many sad stories,
too many tales of loss and lamentation.
Just to tabulate the slaveries,
the slaughters, the intentional starvations,
demands more courage than I desire to summon.
And yet to turn away our faces,
to willfully ignore what history
can teach, is deadly dereliction.
Cruelties unthinkable today were once
accepted norm. We need to know
that we are capable of crimes as vile
as those committed long and short ago.
They happened once and, God forbid,
they could and can recur.
Come, take my hand, and, trembling, we shall
go to see Treblinka, learn about the gulag,
visit Wounded Knee, go deep into the Congo,
to confront the Heart of Darkness.
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Very well done. Profound, sobering, true.
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