Having Misplaced the past—²
The past disposes of us with blind Indifference—
And once it’s moved the Fragments of itself & us,
It doesn’t bother afterwards how we spend them.³
Nothing’s stale so long as Yesterday’s Surprise.⁴
All our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to Dusty Death!⁵
The myriad past, it enters us and disappears—
Except that within it somewhere, like diamonds,
Exist the Fragments that refuse to be consumed …⁶
Instead of Possibilities in the future—
We have Realities in our past.⁷
Visiting angels counsel us
Poets to Abandon our past—⁸
Those who cannot forget the
Past—are destined to Remix it:⁹
We change the past into our
Own, Better likeness!¹⁰
¹ Philip Roth, American Pastoral
² Anne Sexton, The Twelve Dancing Princesses
³ Italo Calvino tr. William Weaver, Meiosis
⁴ Emily Dickinson, The Riddle We Can Guess
⁵ William Shakespeare, Macbeth
⁶ Denise Levertov, The Myriad Past
⁷ Viktor E. Frankl tr. Ilse Lasch, Man’s Search for Meaning
⁸ Mahmoud Darwish tr. Munir Akash & Carolyn Forché, Mural
⁹ Evie Shockley, Duck, Duck, Redux
¹⁰ Czeslaw Milosz tr. Czeslaw Milosz, Child of Europe