Remembering Infinity
As the Past Comes Ever Nearer in our Memory, and Always Farther From Our Eyes
When the mind’s eye reflects the past
Where self was part of discovery, and moments
Were saved away without your knowing it — amber and scarab.
Old embroidery now, gone with the mountains of forgetfulness
That children keep for a while, or fond hands touching you —
In nights long past, or was it yesterday?
I remember something of New York when I was three:
The Bus-glint of sun on green painted metal,
The soft song of the double-decker bus on Riverside Drive.
But who remembers the drafting room where a man I never knew,
His pencil aloft in thought, berthed that design.
Could he predict the effect of the sun on the green painted metal,
Or feel the swing of the bus, wheeling, as a great ship
Responds to her rudder, as tons of iron and wood
And living passengers, with stately and deliberate speed
Pass some curving facade, tires scudding on wet pavement,
Riders breathing the aroma of green trees and wet stone.
Perhaps he never saw what he had created, his heart in thrall to
His own past, hooves on pavement, cabs entering Penn Station.
Old songs are played by new children. But the new concrete
Cannot remember what the paving stones knew,
Sounds unique in time like loves remembered or trees cut down
That fade into nothingness making way for new growth.
Christopher Andrews
2008