June 2, 2002

Indictment of My Ancestors

Your legacy to me was a culture of selfishness

Greed, self-centeredness, competition, exploitation and war

Those bombs that almost dropped on me as I was awakening to life

Were your legacy to me. Yours as much as Hitler=s

You, even more than the Germans, had participated in

And gained from the violence pervading the European culture

Hitler only turned your own weapons against yourselves

Weapons which you had been using for over four centuries

Against others, turning people into slaves and nations into colonies

I indict you for this heritage

How sweet to have been born into a culture respecting of life

A civilization whose goal were not self-aggrandizement

But rather equality, justice, empathy, interpersonal respect

Understanding, peaceful conflict negotiation, joy in diversity

Perhaps then, I would not have had to cower in agony

Because bombs were falling from the sky B

A sky you should have bequeathed to me beautiful

Forever and ever only beautiful

Today, our same culture is marring the sky with nuclear bombs B

That same sky that for our descendants should remain beautiful

Forever and ever only beautiful.