Poem: A Burnt Offering

I can't ever look back.


I can't ever rip time off the wall, and wind the reel back to the start.

Like that picture in my mind of you leaving, the back of your perfect head

framed in the doorway. I can never rip that off of the wall, and go back.

I can't go back because if I start there, then I will keep going. First,

I'll save our marriage, then I will go a little farther and save the lives

the people I loved and didn't love that I watched die last year. Next,

it will occur to me that I should go farther back and save the Jews.

If you could shoot Hitler in 1933, before the madness, wouldn't you?

I will. I will shoot him. Then I will cry in a graveyard in Berlin,

and go farther back. So many to save--I will burn the smallpox blankets,

free the slaves, warn the Incas, bring down Torquemada, destroy the Huns,

bring down the coliseums, and keep going back and back. I will

come to Christ's cross with a machine gun and an axe, and I will cut him

down. I will never let men sacrifice men, never in the name of God

and never in the name of power. I will never let six million Jews burn up

in smoke. I will change history. I will save innocence.


But I cannot go back. I shake my fists, I jump up and down, I cry. I

am stuck here in the present, and the past is a weight I can barely carry.

I can't ever look back.