They told me in school that an oral tradition 
was primitive, left to the lesser ones doomed 
to be conquered, absorbed and assimilated, 
or just eliminated, easy enough when you have 
the big guns and a new world order. 

We couldn't know otherwise, we were children 
held by the force of that order in rows of efficiency, 
one size fits all unless you were a lefty, crabbed 
and akimbo, you failed at penmanship, o well,  
you, too, must be conquered, part of the plan. 

The first scribes were bean-counters, keepers of 
ledgers of ower and owed, of owner and owned, 
their marks were the Mark of the Fall, feted now, 
and Masters of the Universe, while the storytellers 
are all at the kids table.

Seated among those twisted spines, speaking to the
was, is, and will be in languages foreign and ancient, 
they share the secret as they pass the bread and butter: 
that the story doesn't end just because the ones 
who hold the ledgers burn the books.