The plunge of civilization into this abyss of blood and darkness… is a thing that so gives away the whole long age during which we have supposed the world to be, with whatever abatement, gradually bettering, that to have to take it all now for what the treacherous years were all the while really making for and meaning is too tragic for any words.

– Henry James – 1914 – on the day England entered WWI

The world always gets turned upside down

I see that and know it

It’s the way everything works

Always has worked

It’s a cycle

I studied history

The facts are clear

Cause and effect

Random occurrences

A trampoline of ups and downs

Forever

Intellectually Henry I knew it

I thought you wrote real pretty

But then I moved on

A footnote, an addendum, something that happened

To someone else

but I didn’t get it Henry

and

Wish I didn’t get it now.

Gene G. McLaughlin 2016