Amnesia Poem by D A Phinney

Atlanteans have no need to look back.
We prefer living fables to the cold dead fact
Of our existence in this time, this cultural lock
Into which we keep sinking. But oh such a shock
To discover the looking glass looks back in terror
At a twice-taken path, and each similar error
That steps us, progressing inexorably,
By pride and by greed toward catastrophe.
With memory knotted behind us we fight
To repeat, if we cannot recall that lost night
Of the soul, the traumatic events of that age
On a far more deadly and dangerous stage.
As the ache of a tooth rooted deep in the mind,
We worry our sanity, till it is blind
And inflamed, our portents, our omens, dismiss,
As we gaily go dancing into the abyss
Like shadows re-enacting ancestral lore;
Known history: mere symptom of a fault at the core
Which won't give us peace till we either recall
Or explode-and know nothing, no, nothing at all.