Legacies
Dorothy Bukantz

in the long savaging
of a small country
by its avaricious neighbor,
for profit.

Yet the experience was so powerful
that it engendered a cultural inheritance
as subtle as singed nerves from
an unfamiliar tune
drifting in the wind
and as blatant as a severed limb-
and that legacy has survived more than seven generations.

All this talk of the past
leads to an obvious question-
what are we going to pass down
to our seventh generation?

There are discernable patterns:
racism breeds bigots; injustice spawns tyrants.
Exploitation begets users and abusers
And the unbearable...familiar...silences...descend.

When we are goaded and duped
into swallowing whole
a controlled vision of our past,
we do the dirty work ourselves-
struck mute by sheer horror
and engulfed in shame,
we stuff our own throats
with the splintered shards of our self-esteem.
If we are not careful,
we can be rendered deaf and blind as well-
Blind to rising smoke and licking flame.
Unable to see just how much the blasted Mayan villages, now
look like the tumbled townlands of An Gorta Mor.
Unable to hear the voices crying out to us-
from Guatemala and Ruanda and Bosnia and Cambodia
and Haiti and El Salvador and Ballymurphy and the Bronx.

And when we do lift our heads and listen,
And when we look and do not drop our eyes,
It is too much,
too much for any one of us
alone

We are not alone.
We have other legacies to claim-
The same false history
that struck us mute,
smothered our pain,
and denied our rage,
conceals an abundance:

the always open door and the beckoning hearth;
the place set ready for the unexpected guest;
agile tongues, sharp wit, the urge to laugh;
dancing at the crossroads
after a day's hard work.

The surety of neighbors
in the hard season,
when the crop fails,
or when dark ships blot the horizon.

What will we pass on
to our grand children's, grand children's grandchildren?

Take care.