Sunday, November 21, 2010

1201. PICTURES OF THE PAST

PICTURES OF THE PAST
Once again I am looking at pictures
of the past; no reason, just pictures
of the past. My finger brushes along a
marking - someone's note in pen. A date,
it looks like, which someone has memorialized
in their late nineteenth century scrawl. An inkpen
writing almost too fussy to be right. There are odd
shadows and the broken faces of two people who have
- evidently - not stood still; or not, at least,
long enough for this exposure as needed. They're
both buried now, I know the names, in the huge
cemetery at the bottom of this awkward hill.
Where am I living while they are dead still?
-
Pictures of the past again. How sad or how
boring - depending on point of view. Like
the Colosseum in Rome, or some Punta
Del Vecchio heard of in stories, what matters
and what difference does any of it make? Broken
metal and twisted steel, old things replaced by
plastic, new containers of some fibrous matter :
everything's been replaced, and we keep on going
anyway. Like the old gardener girl I used to kiss,
it's a fleeting memory of memory's fleeting bliss.

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