Oct 2022
DOC. NO. 30060
to you
who
reads me a thousand
years from now
an impossible you...I
could not begin to imagine
survivor of
WW3
the world almost ceasing
to be
and I, a fragment
of history
a few burnt pages
a charred eye
an happenstance of
history rather than
merit where
all words...any words
were made precious
me now
an historic document
that you try to breath
life into
a me impossible to know
me the so
long ago
eaten by time
devoured by history
the symbolic irony
of the charred eye
the rest of the photo
not making it
and so, my impossible-to-know
write your academic paper
on this me that has
long ceased to be
but how my thought survives
in my only known poem
words burnt
at the edges
so many unknowns
so many...ellipses
I, Dónall Dempsey
artifact No. 30060
returned to the library
at 6.30
Thursday, 3035
the 15th of July
*
I imagined that by 3035 and yet another world war anything as flimsy as paper or literature would all have gone up in flames....even Shakespeare and the Bible for God's sake. As it would happen only my small effort( unworthy as it was)was doomed to survive and they wouldn't even know( as they do now)if it was poetry....they believe it to be some kind of code but if so why trust it such a destructible format as paper( but then they would have forgotten what paper was). And so my words have become precious simply because they are the only words that have survived from our terrible times. How fortunate/unfortunate?
to you
who
reads me a thousand
years from now
an impossible you...I
could not begin to imagine
survivor of
WW3
the world almost ceasing
to be
and I, a fragment
of history
a few burnt pages
a charred eye
an happenstance of
history rather than
merit where
all words...any words
were made precious
me now
an historic document
that you try to breath
life into
a me impossible to know
me the so
long ago
eaten by time
devoured by history
the symbolic irony
of the charred eye
the rest of the photo
not making it
and so, my impossible-to-know
write your academic paper
on this me that has
long ceased to be
but how my thought survives
in my only known poem
words burnt
at the edges
so many unknowns
so many...ellipses
I, Dónall Dempsey
artifact No. 30060
returned to the library
at 6.30
Thursday, 3035
the 15th of July
*
I imagined that by 3035 and yet another world war anything as flimsy as paper or literature would all have gone up in flames....even Shakespeare and the Bible for God's sake. As it would happen only my small effort( unworthy as it was)was doomed to survive and they wouldn't even know( as they do now)if it was poetry....they believe it to be some kind of code but if so why trust it such a destructible format as paper( but then they would have forgotten what paper was). And so my words have become precious simply because they are the only words that have survived from our terrible times. How fortunate/unfortunate?
