They have allowed                                       
the return of evil
the return of those
who feel no regret in killing
while following orders 
and we have allowed 
our leaders to send weapons
wrapped in frozen words 
and shreds of half truth.
How will we erase our sins
as history follows us
relentlessly
like an angry dog 
with puzzled and unsettling eyes 
that keep asking
How could this happen?
Wie konnte das passieren?

Antje Stehn, born in Germany, resides in Italy. Poet, visual artist, art curator, member of German PEN. She is co-editor of the poetry Magazine TamTamBumBum, Los Ablucionistas. She is member of the directive committee of the Piccolo Museo della Poesia of Piacenza, Italy. Since 2020 she is curating the art-poetry project “Rucksack a GlobalPoetryPatchwork“ and in 2023 “Hair in the Wind“ which involved more than 250 international poets. She published several chapbooks and in 2022 the bilingual German-Italian book Grotesque, with Expeditionen Verlag.