by Chase Twichell

    When fed into the crude， imaginary

    machine we call the memory，

    the brain's hard pictures

    slide into the suggestive

    waters of the counterfeit¹.

    They come out glamorous² and simplified，

    even the violent ones，

    even the ones that are snapshots of fear.

    Maybe those costumed，

    clung-to fragments are the first wedge

    nostalgia³ drives into our dreaming.

    Maybe our dreams are corrupted⁴

    right from the start： the weight

    of apples in the blossoms overhead.

    Even the two thin reddish dogs

    nosing down the aisles⁵ of crippled trees，

    digging in the weak shade

    thrown by the first flowerers，

    snuffle in the blackened leaves

    for the scent⁶ of a dead year.

    Childhood， first love， first loss of love——

    the saying of their names

    brings an ache to the teeth

    like that of tears withheld⁷.

    What must happen now

    is that the small funerals

    celebrated⁸ in the left-behind life

    for their black exotica， their high relief，

    their candles and withered⁹ wreaths，

    must be allowed to pass through

    into the sleeping world，

    there to be preserved and honored

    in the fullness and color of their forms，

    their past lives their coffins¹⁰.

    Goodbye then to all innocent surprise

    at mortality's panache¹¹，

    and goodbye to the children fallen

    ahead of me into the slow whirlpool

    I conceal¹² within myself， my death，

    into its snow-froth and the green-black

    muscle of its persuasion¹³.

    The spirits of children

    must look like the spirits of animals，

    though in the adult human

    the vacancy¹⁴ left by the child

    probably darkens the surviving form.

    The apples drop their blossom-shadows

    onto the still-brown grass.

    Old selves， this is partly for you，

    there at the edge of the woods

    like a troop of boy soldiers.

    You can go on living with the blade

    of nostalgia in your hearts forever，

    my pale darlings. It changes nothing.

    Don't you recognize me？ I admit

    I too am almost invisible now， almost.

    Like everything else， I take on

    light and color from outside myself，

    but it is old light， old paint.

    The first shadows are supple¹⁵ ones，

    school of gray glimpses， insubstantial.

    In children， the quality of darkness

    changes inside the sleeping mouth，

    and the ghost of child-grime——

    that infinite smudge of no color——

    blows off into the afterlife

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