Analysis of What have we learned from the past, when



the gift of deceit released devastation and death
in the ancient city, rebuild and destroyed in Homeric tales;
90 per cent of indigenous people were killed
by conquistadors bringing European diseases to the new world;
religious struggle fuelled war across Europe for thirty years:
uniting, dividing, igniting people, then dying;
one assignation triggered a rapid chain of events
killing forty million people in pain, in torment and trenches;
one man released an evil curse on millions of innocent people
across continents, across cultures, across generations;
a political potential murdered more than two million individuals
to create a state of emotionless mute agricultural workers?

Ingenious deception can win any war
and biological warfare is a powerful tool,
Enlightenment does not reach the human core
and social trauma cannot be cured by dissolution.
Burned bones cannot carry any weight
and condemnation does not name the dead.

Is that all we’ve learned from the past?


Scheme XXXXXXXXXXXX AXAXXX X
Poetic Form
Metre 011010101001 0010100100100101 11101001001 11100100101011 0101010101101101 01001001010110 11100101101 101010100101010 11011101110110010 01100011001010 0010001010111100100 10101111010010 01001011101 001001101001 01001110101 0101010111010 111010101 001011101 11111101
Closest metre Iambic heptameter
Characters 984
Words 165
Sentences 4
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 12, 6, 1
Lines Amount 19
Letters per line (avg) 42
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 269
Words per stanza (avg) 51

About this poem

Reaction to the war in Ukraine

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Submitted by irisferrier21 on March 25, 2022

Modified on March 05, 2023

49 sec read
3

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    "What have we learned from the past, when" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/123119/what-have-we-learned-from-the-past%2C-when>.

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