Recalibration

“I do not admit that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia . . . by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race . . . has come in and taken their place.” (Winston Churchill, 1937, speaking before the Palestine Royal Commission).  
 
 
For those who still feel, the world is a tragedy  
and it stings in places one wonders  
were better left unvisited  
 
but time offers crossed slots of opportunity  
where historical pain needs recalibration  
when iconic figures are revealed as merely human;  
 
removed from their pedestals  
they suffer head-aches, depression, constipation —  
Somos todos humanos as they say in Portugal.  
 
Perhaps if we never judged anyone by their worst moment  
the sky would lighten and all ducks would quack more authentically  
as compassion made in-roads to the left side of our brains.  
 
In the battle for truth  
revisionist historians deliver controversial accounts —  
but according to Buckminster Fuller  
 
the basic building block of the universe is the tetrahedron  
suggesting triangularity encompasses  
victim-perpetrator-rescuer as well as faith-hope-love.  
 
 
 
 
#BillyCollins