What Has Been Will Be Again Poem by Chen-ou Liu

A haiku sequence written in response to mass shootings in the United States in 2022

on the news ticker
another mass shooting...
he asks, anything new?

George Floyd Square
a white man shoots a black boy
with his finger pistol

timeforchangetimeforchange...
a police dog
barking at its echo

Notes:

1 The title is taken from Old Testament, Ecclesiastes 1: 9 (New International Version)

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

2 So far this year, there have been '201 mass shootings' in the United States, and it's only May. CNN and the Gun Violence Archive define a mass shooting as one that injures or kills four or more people... CNN News, May 16

3 Jessie Li, 'American Racism and the Buffalo Shooting, ' NewsLetter, May 16,2022

Once startling and noteworthy, mass shootings have melded into the background of life in the U.S, ' Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes, noting that there have been roughly two hundred such shootings recorded in the country so far this year. Yet some events still have the ability to shock. On Saturday afternoon, an eighteen-year-old who allegedly posted a hundred-and-eighty page 'manifesto' avowing white-supremacist beliefs opened fire at a grocery store in the primarily Black neighborhood of Masten, in Buffalo, hitting thirteen people and killing ten. Taylor, who was born in Buffalo, writes that the shooting 'must be viewed within the context of the growing normalization of racism and political violence in the U.S.' Taylor examines the parallels between the shooter's manifesto and the rhetoric of conservative figureheads, including Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson, and speaks with a local pastor, whose congregants were directly affected by the attack. 'Many people were angry, ' he says, and notes that the violence seems like a continuation of a broader trend of inequity that Black people in Masten have experienced. As Taylor writes, 'For decades, Black life has been seen as disposable.