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Revisionist

He claimed it was history-
his great love.  Went to
university, learned one battle
after another.   The kings were lauded
for removal of all references
to their predecessors - success
rewritten and attributed elsewhere.
Writers were rounded up
and executed for incompatible histories
or politics.  To express opposition
was a suicide request.   Yes,
he'd studied it well and loved
that ordinary humans could do anything
under the pretense "good of the people."
In each chapter, Death's hand scribbled
words in the margins.

What was there to love.
One great war after another.  Governments
fell.  Emperors fiddled.   A great city
was leveled and salted so nothing would
grow, ever again.  Soldiers killed people
for land and resources.  Slaves rebelled
and were slaughtered.   An entire coliseum
of dissidents were murdered
by a Christian king.
It was never the history, which
remains tongueless and buried.  His passion
was for revision, though he claimed
otherwise.  A lie told perfectly
repeated until it is believed. 

The truth

never found that fabled waterway to the page.  
The editor disappeared and never seen alive again.
The author too, went missing, unearthed years 
later from a shared grave.   

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