Wake Up The Echoes

"Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it."
- George Santayana

A peasant farmer wades through the mud,
Through the rice paddy, all for the family.
On this note, he stumbles, falls face first,
Yet gently regains his composure as Buddha would.
He bends over to pick up the object, a skull, over which he fell,
And memories flash back to days thankfully in the past,
Memories drenched in blood. Chaos. Genocide.
He remembers his family. It's been roughly thirty years
Since the day he fell at the hands of men
Who carried out the orders of a truly evil soul,
One who had lost the way toward the path of the light
And had, instead, made a U-turn into misery rather than joy.

He remembers growing up in the big city,
And of a national revolution going on four years strong.
Then the evil one came. The one who made promises for a utopia,
Of a more pure life for those who would abide by him.
The city, once a vibrant outlet for humanity to intermingle,
Was evacuated, and its citizens sent to the countryside.
The emotions overwealm the peasant man,
For he remembers being separated from his father, his mother,
His grandmother, grandfather, his siblings.
Buddha was suddenly supplanted by the evil one.
It was as if the light had been shut off.

He recalls being enlisted into the army,
Being whipped everytime he showed signs of exhaustion,
And the echoes of the predators' guns
Ripping into their unsuspecting prey.
At first, the peasant boy would cry,
But then he would endure unimaginable corporal punishment,
And thus he started equating human emotion
As nothing more than a cry without a reply other than a cane.
So he worked on, working for the good of the collective,
For the demands of the evil one, so he now understands.
He remembers one phrase which vividly sums up the experience:

"To keep you is no gain. To destroy you is no loss."

Years passed, and he thought he might die,
Having grown bitter, and wishing that it would happen.
Then the army from the neighboring country invaded,
And thwarted the evil one and his minions once and for all.
But the scars remained. Where was his family?
"Well, the bodies, they disappeared,"
And so he had grown up into a young man,
Hardened, having lost the way toward the light,
Having lost the acquired knowledge of his role as a filial son.
The peasant realizes he's alive today, but the pain remains the same.
This skull, which could be his father's, did wake up the echoes.