Past On, or
The Past too Shall Pass
by Elliot Bougis
(591 words)
The past
parts.
But the past parts
––do they part?
Time lost
is the only time
we know,
the only time
we gain
with the tender called pain.
We speak in echoes;
we serve the dead.
The passed on
we know
are free
from the pull of the past
as the fallen vase
we hide,
and the fallen heart
we hid,
are free
from the pull of gravity,
and the hard hands of hope.
To be free of time,
outside time…
To surpass the past
by passing…
Gam zeh ya’avor.
+ + +
Memory flees
the touch of the mind
as oil from the touch of soap
on the empty face of water
four-cornered flees.
At the faintest touch
the past collapses
into itself
like a folded blanket
of darkness––
stripped, shelved, delved, but mute––
strangely,
like a dark comforter.
Memory hides
from the tongue of recollection,
from the lips of introspection,
as darkness only darkens
when a beam of 'lectric light
licks the night.
The gleam of the present
blinds the eye of the mind––
tiny rods toppled and burst,
incandescent,
like bowling pins aflame––
as a torch in hand
blinds the probing
nighttime eye, aye, I.
Thus does dark's ancient foe,
thus does the light,
become a tool of darkness
for the fool in darkness,
much as the present––
the fruit of the past,
unripe or rotten,
only we can say
in time––
casts its full-grown hunched shadow
over the soiled seeds
of the past.
Get thee behind me.
+ + +
In time
the mind drifts back
in time:
just as the body melts into its present––
stark, dense, fleeting,
inescapable, and invisible––
so paraffin fumes fume,
and escape,
so hot
then not,
in time;
while the body,
the body built of wax
so cool,
then hot,
melds in place,
the brittle debris of flickering glory:
a cenotaph of light
in the cenotaph
of time,
in space.
Was it here that I stood
that day, or
is it only here that I stand
this day?
Which is the press
and which the palimpsest?
“Memory speaks
before knowing remembers.”
But I wonder, aye,
who is at which end
of the microscope…
And who dials,
and who picks up.
+ + +
Where I find myself––
is it the same where
where I found a place
for myself?
One when
where I won,
staked my claim
in time;
struck a furrow in space,
scattered seeds,
in case;
my nails scratching, digging,
saying this is mine,
in time,
this place,
this furrowed face,
all mine
to mine.
The puzzle of myself––
is it really made of the pieces I find
in myself?
Am I just a collage
of my past, or
am I just the shadow
cast ahead
in time,
my future,
a corridor of opaque hope,
cast for me, from me, by me, despite me,
by the dying light of past-lit candles
called memories?
What does the past impart
when it parts?
What does the present leave
when it leaves?
Is my present
the key
in that dark void of past passion,
or only just another way
of telling the riddle
in reverse?
We shroud, we shred
the echoes
under a laughter––
call it progress––
that mocks the dead
for making us.
Slip the yoke and change
the joke––
or is it just
a change of the joke
with a self-tied yoke?
+ + +
My past has cost me
so much of my past.
The time has come,
time has come
and gone,
for the past…
Time is up
for the past:
to go now,
in time.
