Sonnet #120

We say we want the truth, but we also 

say that history is written by the victors

And I know I'm not alone in a little gloss sewn

into the edges of my tellings. So, to lectors

At the podium, what's the memory we speak?

Do we aim for unvarnished truth, glazing eyes

of undergraduates, and all strained, stern, bleak

The story without a destiny, without a prize

Just molecules smashing painfully against the walls

And memory is only what happened, how nothing rises

no path converges long, or do we speak a little tall

About the things we think the ancestors advise us

About the way to walk the tale we're meant to keep

Call back, again to myths that whisper in our sleep?