A History Of Trauma: Nat, Babo, Then Perhaps Don Benito Cereno In His Turn Poem by Dennis Ryan

Thursday, March 25,2010,11 p.m.; revised Thursday, August 18,2011

"His aspect seemed to say, since I cannot do deeds, I will not speak words.
Put in irons in the hold, with the rest, he was carried to Lima."
- Herman Melville, Benito Cereno

"You may forget, but let me tell you this:
Someone in some future time will think of us."
- Sappho, Fragment #60

Not much has changed throughout human history, or will hereafter
if history is any indicator: toe the line, follow protocols, procedures,
or else; it's just a matter of how many how often, when and where;
nevertheless, we should never stop asking why, the ultimate whys and wherefores.
I want to ask Babo, Nat what they were thinkingin their final moments.
I want to ask for the sake of memory, lest I forget their terror, their trauma,
for without memory, what are we but slaves to this particular time and place.
At the end, however, neither man had anything to say, Nat going silently
to the hanging tree, Babo's head mounted on a spike in the plaza, gazing
silently at the Spaniards at St. Bartholomew's where Aranda's bones lay;
and across the Rimac bridge towards the monastery on Mount Agonia—
the gaze across history being the gaze to be without."Without power,
having lost it, unable to do deeds, why speak? " Babo must have thought.
Only Captain Delano spoke that day, volubly as was his habit, while walking
across the plaza with Don Benito Cereno,the Spaniard too lost in thought,
too silent, as silent as his friend's bones lying in the crypt about which
he had nightmares—he could still hear his cries.Had he spoken more
than two words that day, Don Benito might have said this: "Look at me—
a Spaniard, barely alive, and at him, what's left of him, on that spike there.
History never tells the truth.History is trauma realized, then silenced."