Having Misplaced the Past²
Visiting Angels counsel our
Poets: to Abandon their Past³
Instead of Possibilities in the
Future – I have Realities in my Past⁴
Nothing’s stale so long as Yesterday’s Surprise⁵
The Myriad Past, it Enters us and Disappears –
Except that within it somewhere, like Diamonds,
Exist the Fragments that Refuse to be Consumed⁶
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 them⁷
Change the Past into your own, Better Likeness⁸
All our Yesterdays have Lighted
Fools the way to Dusty Death⁹
Those who cannot Forget the
Past are destined to Remix it¹⁰
¹ Philip Roth, American Pastoral
² Anne Sexton, The Twelve Dancing Princesses
³ Mahmoud Darwish tr. Munir Akash & Carolyn Forché, Mural
⁴ Viktor E. Frankl tr. Ilse Lasch, Man’s Search for Meaning
⁵ Emily Dickinson, The Riddle We Can Guess
⁶ Denise Levertov, The Myriad Past
⁷ Italo Calvino tr. William Weaver, Meiosis
⁸ Czeslaw Milosz tr. Czeslaw Milosz, Child of Europe
⁹ William Shakespeare, Macbeth
¹⁰ Evie Shockley, Duck, Duck, Redux