Slavery is wrong.  It was wrong in the past.  It is wrong in the present.  It’s a wrong that will go into our future.  That is until we stand together to vanquish this evil.  I cannot stress enough that the slavery of the past is of less consequence than that of the present.  Yet, still it has its consequences.

Memory Inspires the Future
by Michael Romani

On the butterfly isle of Guadaloupe
Is the Darboussier sugar factory
That lays as dormant as the slavery
For which it is remembered in history
Preserved as to function and as legacy
It's social grievance of perversity

It's memory serving to inspire the future
As a little something better we night nurture
The children of the damned sought their humanism
In a checkered past toward fraternity and reconciliation
Towards the rebirth of the French nation

Although welcomed into French citizenry
No cultural amnesia could erase the atrocity
Enough was enough about the moving forward
Without some sort of apology toward
The two hundred years of bloody legacy
That will remain forever a stain on history

No sidestepping of the past evades history
Where the past crimes are those against humanity
Still, dwelling on all the past slights
Will not make any freer the still of night
It's hard to feel fraternal absent equality
That or freedom from what's hard to forgive

Birds perch on a concrete balcony
While Guadaloupeans beg for their dignity
The past and present has an ambiguous boundary
Les Colons seek transcendence from slavery
But until today's children know true equality
There will never be even one French man who is free

(c)  March 30, 2019   Michael Romani
All Rights Reserved