Look not into that hopeful scene, away and down the alleyway
Of your new life—new memories gambol and of them a new past,
Look not into that hopeful scene, nostalgia when comes as a new god
An infant-you beseeching you, “I’ll guide thy hand down two hist’ries.”
Look not into that hopeful scene, the past is clear and now empty
Autumn is sweet, exalted still though with this cold, and bitter will
A hopeful scene as it looks not, as car-exhaust mornings spray cool
The baby-sitter years, or days under the eye both looking in
That hopeless scene, the beauty of this never-was, never-had, likely
Never-will. For the reclaiming of past selves as wonton, fickle
As the purchase of small antiques and filling up those jars of brine
Today’s home is a present-past, recalled in ferns up through the cracks
Sure as coating on thy heart, it wants us to return, to call on
Doors that long ago inured to wailing of their theft, so it goes
And capturing the long-ago: look not into that hopeless scene.