Lies

Isabel Ros Lopez

picture: Brian Wertheim

Synopsis

“This poem is about how lies told by the powerful purposefully distort memory, acting as the collective impact of the bite of a Tsetse fly on the broad population, causing a deep sleep and forgetfulness, ultimately ignorance.”

We have no history
recent nor ancestral
it seems
the dead are alive
dictators are saints
conquerors are heroes
and rapists the victims of gossip.

It happens that every time
that history yawns
after a long ‘siesta’
to regain strength
and sticks her head up
wielding a pen
or a megaphone
snakes scramble
to inject her with the poison
of the Tsetse fly.

So she falls again
into the well of the vanished
no funeral or tombstone
marking her grave
while the dissonant chorus
of the sovereigns
and their greedy sycophants
reminds us that we have
no more history than their terrifying tales.

But the dead are alive
they remember everything
word spreads
and history 
rears her head, rising
this time with wings, with feathers
vaccinated against fright
oblivion and lies.
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