What’s history? Is history
when Abraham Lincoln stands, thinking,
hand on the back of a chair?
Is history those breathless bludgeonings, the sporadic wild words
from the mist at Culloden?
What is history? Is it when everyone believes the handshakes
in spite of all the epaulettes?
Is it history when Picasso and his guests
see six pudgy German tourists
lying in a nude row on the cobbled beach
not far from Antibes, scrotums lined up
like apologetic mice,
like subdued
sausages?
The guests laugh
at these incongruous, privileged bodies –
but the painter frowns, remembering
carolling children’s voices, footsteps of unsuspecting lightness,
the edicted morning school assemblies,
the boots of Nazis misunderstanding
Paris stairs.
Is that history?
The Nazis loved their music. Is that history?
Is history the steaming biosphere, water
lashing empty lanes? Is history present tense?
That’s what history does –
it bites us, then looks away.