History Lesson

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Bernini filled a thousand bowls

with wishes and water.

In the hands of greatness

a droplet becomes a fountain.

Greeks first, then the Romans,

post-cursors of Asians and gunpowder.

No one recalls the spacemen 

only their art in the Nazca Desert.

Those ruins never flowed. In Venezuela, 

an angel falls from on high. Caught

up in their web of deceit

the Spaniards searched out gold

marking each new conquest

with a cross. Territory newly claimed

wore no grave markers

as proof of their disgraced deeds

their genocidal greed carried out

in the name of God and religion.

The antithesis of greatness. Small men

claiming magic makes them big.

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