History is Told by the Victors

History Is Told By The Victors

"We must respect the court ruling, but I know what I will be teaching my children." - Zeljko Komsic, Bosnian Croat president, after the I.C.J. declared the Serbian state innocent of the Srebrenica massacre. History is told by the victors And some of it is true It passes on believeable As those who question it are few. Sometimes somethings dont go our way Or the way they should as we say we see We call black white because we can And so change history. No one denies who done what When or how or where Nobody dares ask as to why What was done then there. No one denies that it is wrong It is no way to fight Jesus himself declared it so That two wrongs dont make a right. Fifty years of hatred And a fanatacism extreme No discipline as a paramilitary Its leader with an obsessive dream. Fifty years remebering The truth that then, yes The Croat and the Bosnian Were in the Skanderberg SS And many years before then Croat done this and Serb done that And Bosniak did something else And so on, tit for tat. They are peoples with the same blood Language difference is not all that great Divided by external powers evil And by fanaticism of faith. Its easy to pull a trigger Rather than talk instead You cant call back a bullett And you cannot raise the dead. Germany after the Nazis After racial genocide Against those who done to them nothing No one to oppress them tried. For after World War One When they tried that before They gave power to Hitler And caused destruction even more. The success of Germany War to restructure and forgive Reeducate, reinvigourate Today together Jew German and Gypsy live. There are those who understand the anger Of the Bosniak and Croat But they massacred towns too in their time But we hear little of that. The numbers they were fewer To prove is diffficult to do And the world is Balkan weary Lack of Serb sympathy is there too. To be fair we must see both sides As they are, not as we think they might For it is the nature of man To hate his neighbour and to fight. Down in the state of South Africa Where crimes similar and worse were done And in Cambodia and Indonesia All have managed to move on. Im not saying whose right and wrong But peace we'll never reach If we refuse to see our failings And hatred of our neighbours we teach. And, as here in early hours I write these words with pen in hand As votes are counted in Ulster, I see As is true in Serbia, is true in Ireland.

 

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Reviews

[Hannah Erickson]

It is truely sad the things that our society (almost especially on a global scale) are willing and able to overlook. Ignorance is mounting as the media tells us what we should and shouldn't believe and so many are willing to fall into their trap.

As for your writing- obviously I'm glad that you wrote on the subject that you did. I also like the voice that you used. It isn't high and mighty nor pretencious. It is written from and for the common man. It's a great way to write about something like this- that affects so many. It puts everyone on an equal level as man and asks why we do such things to each other.

[Fabian G. Franklin]

This was a great bit of political satire. History is only as true as archaeology and anthropology may unearth it. There are Egyptian and Hittite histories which vary greatly in wars won and lost and the great United States genocide of its American native peoples goes largely uncommented upon. We must be ever vigilant to find and weigh the truth.

[Traces]

A powerful write from a man with many concerns and rightly so. It is obvious to me you have the right kind of heart....but unfortunate so many in the world do not share the same mind thoughts. If they did, there would be less war, less hatred. Blessings, Holly

[Deborah Shepard]

The rhyming, beauty the lines well written

very profound powerful loved it

[Gandré]

yes, one has to write those lines, you did it well. I wanted to say... while reading that you forgotten England what it did to Ireland. But then, I was happy smiling, the last stanza. Well done. The problem is Tito wanted to concentrate them and didn't solve the cultural and the religious problem of this multi-country former Yugoslawia. In some way we have it in Italy where all those political parties can't find a summand. Actually, Italy with its many parties is the real democracy, but nowhere is more chaos than there. They learnt to live with it, though and we adore their "dolce vita" with their art and style and cousine and their living into the moment... Well I am glad that Germany became the country no 1 when it is about financial help and donation :=) and yes, sadly history is written by victors... hope all is well. write on, write on.

[Hannah!]

"You can't call back a bullet/and you cannot raise the dead". I loved that line a lot; I think it was the most powerful in the whole poem. I liked the poem, too. The changeableness of historic facts according to interpretation has long fascinated me; you don't even have to lie to almost completely change major events, you just need to leave some facts out and include other ones. History textbooks aren't nearly so accurate as they'd have us all believe.

The rhyming in this poem seems like it could use some tightening, and I'm not sure I understood the bit about Nazi Germany, especially in mention of WW1. It didn't seem to fit in the poem as a whole, as most of the poem was talking about a completely different event. I can kind of understand the comparison you mentioned, but you might want to try going about it in a different way, as the way you have it now is just a bit confusing.