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Lobotomised

So easily forgotten:
Sarajevo, South Africa,
Vietnam and that which
was once simply Korea.
And so many more,
the burning lands, the killing fields,
stolen freedom and many massacres.
 
Has your memory been wiped?
 
The frontier wars, the raped women,
the stolen children, the imprisoned and enslaved men.
Your memory has been wiped,
your eyes were blind.
 
The Spanish swept across the plains,
then the French, the British and eventually the Americans,
and anyone with boats, plains, and guns.
 
Has your memory been wiped?
Your eyes gone blind?
Has your complicity, and that of your ancestors,
been hidden, buried in some grubby field,
or beneath some marvellous monument?
Is your mind completely ragged, keeping it together?
 
Do you remember Truganini? Pemulwuy?
The fate of Bennelong,
dressed up and paraded as the noble savage?
Or has your memory been wiped of that as well?
 
Battered women, abandoned and broken
children, the fate of the hated black fellas.
Do you remember how you treated your wife?
How you scared your children?
Do you remember ganging up in the neighbourhood
against that “foreign” family
that will never be “one of us”?
Or has your memory been wiped?
Has your history been lobotomised?
Your past carefully and immaculately cleaned
while you still say, “out damned spot”,
to every single accusation?
 
The Earth is scarred, the trees are burning,
the children of the forests dying.
For that you don’t need memory.
Are you so completely blind?
Has your vision also been lobotomised?
 
Peter Cartwright
September 2019

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