Lamentable Repetition

A Poem

The poem below is an edited update from the original I posted in August 2022.

How many times have we heard
Santayana’s words,|
“Those who cannot remember the past
are condemned to repeat it.

And echoed by others, such as
Crichton, who poetically said
“If you don't know history,
then you don't know anything.
You are a leaf that doesn't know
it is part of a tree. ”

Yet there it is—
the repetition throughout history
of those without memory
or those who never learned the lessons.

In the wake of willful amnesia
mankind has repeated past follies constantly
leading to famines, plagues, and flames
of war that rivers of blood could never
fully extinguish, but left the wailing
and tears of those mourning so many deaths.

Barely into a new millennium
a historically illiterate lot
emerged to march on that well-trod path
spewing tall tales and swearing false pledges.

The 20th century returned to curse
the 21st with the same played-out tactics
and rhetoric that brought immeasurable
death and destruction to humanity
to a now cheering mob that joins the march with glee
as those who remember wring their weary hands.

We seek solace in nature and within,
listening as the birds pause their singing
and the forest’s trees wilt and shed their leaves
from a man-made unending heat and drought.