Final Words

Final Words


I cannot leave you without saying this:
the past is nothing,
a nonmemory, a phantom,
a soundproof closet
in which Johann Strauss
is composing another waltz
no one can hear.

It is a fabrication, best forgotten,
a wellspring of sorrow
that waters a field
of bitter vegetation.

Leave it behind.
Take your head out of your hands
and arise from the couch
of melancholy
where the window-light falls
against your face
and the sun rides
across the autumn sky,
steely behind the bare trees, glorious
as the high strains of violins.

But forget Strauss.
And forget his younger brother,
the poor bastard
who was killed in a fall
from a podium while
conducting a symphony.

Forget the past,
forget the stunned audience on its feet,
the absurdity of their formal clothes
in the face of sudden death,
forget their collective gasp,
the murmur and huddle over the body,
the creaking of the lowered curtain.

Forget Strauss
with that encore look in his eye
and his tiresome industry:
more than five hundred
finished compositions!
He even wrote a polka for his mother.
That alone is enough
to make me flee the past,
evacuate its temples,
and walk alone under the stars
down these dark paths
strewn with acorns,
feeling nothing
but the crisp October air,
the swing of my arms
and the rhythms of my stepping--
a man of the present
who has forgotten
every composer, every great battle,
just me,
a thin reed blowing in the night.

~ Billy Collins~

Posted over on Panhala