Halls of the Dark Muse

Slavery: A History

In slavery it seems
people can only see
in terms of black & white
blinded to all the shades of gray
while fixating on a singular event
which was only one notch
upon the belt of history,
but long before the "New World"
was discovered slavery has lived
and breathed.

It first began with primordial man
during wars among clans
where women were taken
to serve as wives for their rivals,
in ancient Babylonian times,
they had their own slave laws
in the Code of Hammurabi,
the Bible bespoke of
the Hebrews and Egyptians,
while during the days of Gaul
the Romans broke the back
of those wild Celts
and held them beneath their heal,
the Greeks in their time
held others in submission,
while far away across
the glittering hot desert sands
of the Middle East, ripe with conflict
men and women alike were traded and sold,
and father still
the great Dynasties of Asia
kept their own subservients
while throughout Europe
under the Feudal system
Lords used and abused their own kinsmen
separated by class
and spanning over the gleaming oceans
of deep heaving blue
the Golden Empire of the Aztecs
held firm in hand all outlining
tribal lands, until the
Spaniards came and took them all.

This is only but a glimpse
of men bending the will of men
to their knees, long before
the African slave trade,
is this a justification?
Most assuredly not
but what is there left to do?
Will we spend our days
glaring bitterly at one another
over transgressions
of a distant past?
For you will see
no matter your ethnicity
somewhere down the line
another wronged your Nationality.

Now today, we have
the "white slave trade"
spanning races
to subject women & girls
to horrors too great to be voiced
of forced drugs and rape,
but by all means,
spend your time locked in debate
over the 17th century
when on this day, this hour, this second
someone's daughter
perhaps barely thirteen
is suffering
and likely not to live to see
the age of twenty.