Clearly, I Was a Person of My Times

Colubus facing the viewer, pleading his case.

Hear me read
the poem as
an MP3 file.

Watch me read
the poem as
an MP4 file.

Audio and Video Music:
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By Ugonna Onyekwe.
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at YouTube.
Illustration Credit: AI

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Columbus Day
Poems

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Site

Poems for
Free

Copyright by
Nicholas Gordon

Clearly, I was a person of my times,
One who treated races not my own
Like savages, sub-humans. Now my crimes
Understandably must stand alone,
Must, like Washington's, like Jefferson's,
Be seen as though memorialized in stone,
Unfit for celebration, the preference
Switched to those whose brutal genocide
Deserves far more than I to be remembered.
A plea for context, though: the seas I plied
Yielded up a future I engendered.

Copyright by Nicholas Gordon. Free for personal or non-commercial use.

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