We had parked in a quiet Skopje side street
and the Germans parked in front were
surveying the wreckage of their car.
“They don’t like Germans here,” they said.
We sympathised.
“It’s because of what the Germans did
in Yugoslavia in the war,” we replied.
“But that wasn’t us!” they said.
And of course they were right!
The sins of the fathers..
“But not our fathers”
they might have responded.
And of course they’d be right.
Probably.
And so it goes,
the sins of the fathers.
There are no barriers,
no boundaries,
no constant
of time
or place
so they play out
over and over
again.
