Once their stories start up, you’ll fall silent –
having no family, can offer them nothing,
can’t be one for nostalgia, born illegitimate
in those postwar years when it still counted
as seriously shaming – to some, that shame
should be seared onto their child, much as
paper in sunlight, once rays through a lens
are focused hard onto it, can get blackened
and curl up; now attending wholeheartedly
to the others’ old anecdotes, you have none
of your own to trade back; there’s not much
to tell about having grown up with hatred.
Nor would you want to get branded again,
for those to whom violence was done aren’t
fated to hand it down – it’s the doctrinaire
sheltered judge who’ll insist everyone must;
you grasped that it burned itself out on you.