PAD Day 6: Those Who Do Not Remember the Past...

Today's dual prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a poem entitled "After _____", and (2) write a poem about the "possible", that is, "a poem that emphasizes the power of  'if,' of the woulds and coulds and shoulds of the world."  These two prompts fit together rather nicely today, and they took me into somewhat political territory.

After the Regime

If we could topple all the monuments

to inhumanity, all the despots of the world,

every Ozymandias, no matter how ruined,

if we could haul down the grotesque images

of bronze and stone, tie ropes around their necks

and pull like a coup-de-tug-of-war,

all our thousands, millions heaving-ho

as they scrape from their pedestals

and shatter on the ground,

if we sweep them up, smelt them

or grind them down, and re-use them

for bridges or shelters for the poor,

would we be free from their boot heels,

their merciless thumbs, or would we

forget and do it all over again?