HAVE YOU WONDERED?

You have wondered, I am sure,

from times quite recent to our distant past

why we have wrought great cruelty

on others of our kind.

From Charlemagne and the Saxons

to Cromwell with the Irish,

and not that long ago,

the Germans with the Jews.

That the victims were somewhat different

even portrayed as not quite human,

was the reason that no-one argued

against their imprisonment or their slaughter.

Today we can read the propaganda,

watch the newsreels of that time. We would 

still be very sure that we would not

have condemned the different ones called Jews.

Yet they who sent their neighbours to the camps,

were people who had loved and laughed,

who had worked and cried; and came

from families like yours and mine.

Were we not the same when most of us approved

of locking men and women, children,

outsiders every one,

into camps with wire in many layers,

patrolled by guards and guns?

Were we not the same when we believed

that there were terrorists among them;

that they threw their children overboard,

and our leaders called them monsters.

Were we not the same? we believed

our navy and our leaders

Yet we did not wonder - no photos were allowed

or why the those who knew did not speak

Did we not believe when told they were the wealthy

that the poor and deserving still wait in queue?

Although a meeting with just one of them

would tell us  that this is far from true.

We might hope we are different to nations in the past.

That justice and compassion are values deep ingrained.

But our nation did believe, and we did condemn,

those that did not belong. We are just the same.

Published in Open Boat, Barbed Wire Sky.  Live Poets Press, 2003