The Aftermath

by Margery Parsons / August 2nd, 2026

To you born in the aftermath
of the second world war,
the after-ash of the Holocaust,
the after-blast of Hiroshima,
I see cute baby pictures of you with your mamas
but you could have been a puff of smoke
up the chimney at Auschwitz or Treblinka,
or the shadow of a child on a sidewalk in Hiroshima.
You parents were strivers and dreamers.
They wanted the best for their sons and daughters
but were themselves broken, trapped
by the sick, inhuman, dog-eat-dog society─
anti-woman, antisemitic, anti-Black, anti-joy─
at the start of the “American Century”
and despite the soothing voice of Perry Como
there was no
putting their pieces back together happily.
Your formative years were the sixties.
“Never again” for anyone,
scrappy, red-hot anger
in multiple directions
was etched on your hearts,
tattooed on your psyches.
You fought passionately
so war and genocide,
inequality and oppression
would end up on the crap-heap of history.
Do not go gently into
that good night
without giving your all
to finish the fight
for a world without the horrors, the atrocities
that carved you.

Margery Parsons is a poet and advocate for a radically different and better world. She lives in Chicago and in addition to poetry loves music and film. Her poems have been published in Rag Blog, Poetry Pacific, Calliope, New Verse News, OccuPoetry, Rise Up Review, Haiku Universe, Madness Muse Press and Illinois Poetry Society, with a forthcoming poem in Plate of Pandemic. Read other articles by Margery.

This article was posted on Sunday, August 2nd, 2026 at 8:00am and is filed under Poetry.