It’s the stuff they don’t tell you about in schools

that when you find out about them, the sheer arrogance

and mocking laughter that comes off the screen

or jumps out at you

from a previously unread book that realise with distaste

and agony that yet again the liars have composed the score

and the tune has become unpalatable.

 

How is it possible that education does not prepare

you for the crimes in Indonesia in nineteen-sixty-eight

that were before your time

but so much closer than the radical deeds of a supposed heretic

and yet we are weaned on the words of Kings

and for the Million who died in the Snake River,

headless and forgotten, they have no books on forgiveness.

 

I could feel the rising anger

the bitterness, hatred and the self righteous smirk

for the camera that the killers displayed and I found

that if that had happened in the country I call home

and it had been lied about,

well would the anger stop after a short while

or could the words of forgiveness ever come from me.

 

A million headless souls into the Snake River,

all in the name of ideological warfare,

something is very much amiss in the world

if that crime against humanity is not known

even in the country

where it took place and the propaganda of a state regime

runs like clockwork and the Dollar reigns supreme.

 

For Joshua Oppenheimer

Ian D. Hall 2015