What happened?

Had he discovered Christ’s essential truth
when Luther nailed his theses to the door;

did Einstein’s never-ending search for proof
elucidate a universal law;

or was it humble happenstance that saw
us tell their counting beads to gauge our worth?

Can gilding tales of nightly siege and war
they knew, dissolve our children’s ingrained hurt?

Historians, parents, demagogues, the church,
our mischievous and guardian selves, TV…

make sense of all that’s passed, on our behalf
but – never mind how well they choose their words –

by naming, they distort the shapes they see
and blur the backlit veil on which they’re cast.

First published in Pennine Platform no. 84