Gregory Dark
" Who is your friend ? The person who
Helps you to be your youest you "
From 'Susie and the Snow- it- alls'
Loads of Odes
The History of Humankind
The history of humankind
Has been of humans trying to be kind
Whilst those that reigned them reined them in.
That didn’t only just begin:
Mugabe, Berlusconi, Bush, Hu, Blair
Are just the ersatz, third rate heirs
Of emperors, sultans, popes, commanders
The Caesars, Ivans, Alexanders –
Those, they think, who share the chess’ king’s fate:
Once they’ve been taken it’s check-mate,
That’s it, it’s done, the end of all:
Armageddon, Humpty Dumpty’s fall.
Alexander wasn’t ‘Great’, he was a drunken lout,
Who raped and murdered, who rapined rout
On millions to appease his megalomania:
The ‘Great’s’ a myth become a mythomania,
A lodestone of a world now so perverted
That ethics, morals, they’re totally inverted.
The maharajahs, pharaohs, the so-called ‘rulers’
Should more correctly be called the ‘cruellers’.
Whilst these inhumans cruelled over nations
Committing pillage, genocide, abominations,
There were humans trying to be human, trying to be kind ...
There were humans dying to be human, dying to be kind:
And that’s the history of humankind.
The legacy of shoguns, the khans and tsars
Are our species’ deepest scars
Because those cruellers taught us all
To be forever in their thrall.
We’re bludgeoned to believe that ‘they’ know best ...
And to ignore ‘best’ is always their vested interest;
That ours, it ain’t to question why,
That what ours is is just to do and die ...
To do others in and die.
Today’s control is far more subtle
But still it brooks of no rebuttal.
The history in schools is still propaganda,
Embossed by the venal media that thus pander
To our vices, to our fantasy,
Not to what is, but what we want to be.
They circumscribe our protests, define our questions,
Imprison choice, emasculate suggestions.
They teach us black is white,
That killing’s justified, that might is right,
That they’re the state and that the state
Can tell you whom to love and hate,
Has the right to crush your hope,
To tell you only it can cope
' Göring the Hero '
How I’ve always hated him, that peacocked lump of lard,
Eggs scrambled over uniforms of blue and green and brown,
The robber of Europe’s fine art, the bonhomied facade,
The gourmet executioner, the genocidal clown.
But there’s another Göring, it’s one we never see:
One who risked his execution to help many to go free.
How I’ve also hated him, that figure all in black,
Himmler of the SS, those direful horn-rimmed glasses;
How I’ve hated all his lackeys, so-called because they lack
A modicum of conscience, and by whom pity never passes.
And yet there was his doctor, a doctor we don’t know,
A physician who used position to become a Doctor “No”.
Kersten was this doctor’s name, who treated Himmler’s cramps
But this relief depended on Himmler showing some compassion,
And train-loads bound for concentration camps
Were diverted from gas chambers in just this very fashion.
Albert was the Göring, Hermann’s younger sibling,
And to him and the unsung Kersten this song of thanks I sing.
I’ve watched hours and hours of newsreels of Heinrich and of Hermann,
And just one hour of Kersten, and of Albert scarce a mention.
We need history that is germane, not merely anti-German;
And less callousness, more kindness should merit our attention,
Else in this age which genuflects to all celebrity
We make stars of those who embody such vicious cruelty.
If we’re to learn from history, historians must write
Not just of kings and armoured knights, but of diplomats and pages;
It’s their duty to report that for each brutal night
There’ve been weeks of radiance; more outrage than outrages.
We hear, and far too often, of the barbaric execrations;
Hear far too rarely of such as these who could be inspirations.
If we’re to learn from history, we must open up our eyes
To all the selflessness around us, to all the people who’ll
Respond with love and courage. This should come as no surprise
’Cos cruelty’s th’ exception, and this which is the rule:
A rule more sovereign than any king’s could be
Because it’s been the human rule which defines humanity.
When cynicism’s had its wail, then, my friends, we’ll see
The history of humanity’s
Ten billion stories
Of humanity –
Which finally
Is just one story
Of just one humanity.
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