Hupomeno: To Remain Under

We sat side by side, watching the sun recede

Knowing, with a kind of resigned assurance, that we would never

                                                            remember tomorrow

                                                what had happened today.

Your look—and I have never seen you look so wise!—said,

“If I could carry the sun and sky, or even the gravel

Between my fingers, into tomorrow, I would

But in all honesty I would ask for nothing else but the clarity

                                                                        I feel

In my heart, lungs, mind, in the ability to speak without trembling

But I know, as those attending spirits told me,

That I would never remember tomorrow

What has happened today.”

“Do you resent them then? Will you claw at their doorstep

And snarl, short-tempered, for satiation

When they deny you tomorrow

What they have granted today?”

“Perhaps,” you replied with mystifying composure, “But

That will be tomorrow. It is not my inclination today

To contest the ways of spirits.”

“So you do not dread,” I said,

To be thrust back into your mortal coil

And, blindly bearing the shame of your ignorance

Be forced to serve the old inferior masters,

Like appetite, time, and illness

Where you may no longer drink clarity like water

But be drowned in the roar of your old life

Shaking your fist at God’s unsmiling face?

Tell me, does not the very thought make you

Question their ways

Or question why you were made this way?”

“Perhaps,” you said again, with a peace which surpassed

                                                            my understanding

“But perhaps he will leave us—oh I don’t know—clues,

In that way He always does

That will lead us back to this shore

When we will be reminded—just so—why we had to leave.

But look: time is drawing near. You must go.”

And when I count the days and years ahead

                                    which I must endure

Before I remember tomorrow

What I have forgotten today

I groan, and feel you groaning with me.

But you would not want that.

So I wash the salt from my mouth and the sand from my nostrils

And stumble, once again, into the yawning dark.

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