My mother has a point when she says what she says about history.

(She says it's useless.)

The usual progress-and-change argument,

And I always hotly defended the worth

Of my 94 in ISC

In the subject that investigates and records what people live by.

I don't know anymore.

How much can we leave behind,

And how fully?

I cannot say that I have forgotten

Even when I have (hopefully) forgiven,

Though my memory for facts is like

A baked-goods smell in a bare kitchen.

Lingeringly, heartbreakingly empty.

And how much do I even want to forget?

How much is the child the father of the man,

And when does it become

Sins of the son visited on the father?

I am not Nemesis. I can only

Remember, catalogue,

Perhaps provide some leads to proof

When the case comes up in court.

I cannot even say what I mean. Cannot

Rise in protest like those

Brave young college students of the seventies

(now mired teaching us)

Who feared neither torture nor incarceration.

It isn't that, now; I speak in metaphors

Because of the anecdotal evidence

Of generations of Experience telling me

That Growing Up and Succeeding In Life

is learning to shut up.

Even if you remember.

How much use is history?

Perhaps students must put up

Parchas and morchas in soundproof corridors

And other academic circles.

And maybe then they will remember to change.