As a child survivor of WWII, the author vividly recalls the darkest hour of history when “man’s inhumanity to man” eclipsed love, justice and hope, and warns the present, of the undeniable capability of history of repeating itself. The dangerously worsening war in Syria (virtually losing its own statehood and a generation of its finest citizens) has the vestiges of the worst conflicts that has plagued the human race on a global scale.
Dr Abe V Rotor
Living with Nature School on Blog
Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid (People's School-on-Air) with Miss Grace Velasco
738 DZRB AM Band, 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday
WWII Memorial, SPUQC
Burning of St Paul College in Quezon City, a hanging wall mural by the author and his children - Marlo, Anna and Leo, 2000
Xerxes’ aide a thousand times whispered,
Xerxes’ aide a thousand times whispered,
“Remember the Greeks!”
To keep memory
of late father King Darius.
Nay, but revenge is all a coward seeks.
A thousand
times, we too, cried,
“Remember the Japanese!"
In
hopelessness even as many had died,
time restored the broken peace.
Our cry died
on marble floors,
died in echoes and in the shade
Of high rise
buildings and halls
the new generation made.
You stand there
frigid and mute,
cold as steel against the flame;
Three beams of
a chapel before,
now a tripod devoid of fame.
Shh… hear the cries in the dungeon,
the
comfort women, their muffled moan;
The ashes left by countless souls,
ghastly
ruins against the moon.
Remember the tortuous Death March,
Corrigidor, Auschwitz, Flanders
The ghosts in concentration camps,
the
nameless heroes on the shore.
Short is modern man’s memory
amidst malls, cars and easy life,
TV, computer, the university.
TV, computer, the university.
All but Good Life sans strife.
Where does faith
in Providence abide –
lessons from childhood lie,
Where once in
the home and school?
Now along with evil they belie.
A new breed
has risen – puzzled,
sitting on a fence among the throng,
Waiting for manna
of capitalism,
and subsidy from the strong.
The essentials
of history –
refresh memory before it’s gone.
Look up hard
at the memorial
to trace the roots of our freedom.
But it is
easier to doze and sleep
and think not of the past.
But war has a
story preserved,
“Never, never the die is cast.”*
To tell as to
why we are here,
Darwin knew not such a test:
Why fallen
victims too, survive,
and
once more live with the fittest.
Remember the
Greeks.” We rather say,
“Remember WW II!”
Two things different in their
own way,
but look at the cold steel never at ease.~
*Alea iacta est ("The die is cast") is a Latin phrase attributed by Suetonius (as iacta alea estt]) to Julius Caesar on January 10, 49 BC as he led his army across the River Rubicon in Northern Italy. The die is cast is said when a situation is certain to develop in a particular way because decisions have been taken that cannot be changed: From the moment the negotiations failed, the die was cast and war was inevitable.
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