The Force That Placed Us Here Cannot Be Trusted Poem by Robert Ronnow

At dinner, Zach asks
about our nation's history, wars.
I say We're taking on everyone, one at a time.

First Britain, then Britain again: 'He was the surly English
      pluck, and there is no tougher or truer, and never
      was, and never will be.'
Next Mexico: 'Death is indifferent to what hide he tans;
      life crushes men like flies.'
The War Between the States: 'Well done, Mr.
      Cromartie. Time now for rest.'

Most of Latin America: 'Not only humans longed for
      liberation. All ecology groaned for it too. The
      revolution is also one of lakes, rivers, trees, animals.'
Then Southeast Asia: 'The slight bump the mortars make
      as they kiss the tube goodbye. Then the furious rain,
      a fist driving home the message: Boy, you don't
      belong here.'
Now the Middle East: 'A land to be admired like all
      lands. Harsh mountains and deserts, indigenous
      plants and people, adapted ungulates, carnivorous
      mammals.'

Can't forget the Krauts & Nips: 'Then I heard the
      bomber call me in: Little Friend, Little Friend, I got
      two engines on fire. Can you see me, Little Friend? '
Nor the Commies: 'You mixed up farewell to an epoch
      with the beginning of a new one. I put this book here
      for you, who once lived, so that you should visit us
      no more.'
The original indigenous people say: 'In time we'll
      become prosperous, or else we'll become martyrs.
      The force that placed us here cannot be trusted.'



- with lines from Walt Whitman, Tristan Corbiere, Sterling Brown, Ernesto Cardenal, Kevin Bowen,  Czeslaw Milosz and Ray A.Young Bear