Gernika

Written in Spain in August 1988

History is nothing, but how the story is told.
Events are not real unless they are thought so.

My story book tells me it is fifty years
since darkness came from the sky.

It was market day here.
I can almost hear the business of the day:
animals and dirt and money and laughter
and then,
destruction and fire and death and hell.

The papers said there were 2,000 dead
but you can’t believe all that’s written.

It’s gone from your mind, say nothing
of troublesome, cancerous tales.
Only the old bother with such things.
No memorial, no mark, no memory.

Darkness prevails.