The Lamp of Memory
The writer looks back, year
by year, star after star, ever
and anon. "I came out singing,
sailing, and gliding on beauty."
The writer remembers
the river, hills, and flowers.
"I lived like a landscape with
a large glaciar in its midst."
Let us imagine him in stone,
devoted to a life of posterity
and the idea of the future,
Watching the passing waves
of humanity, outlasting the world.
"I believe in objects more
than subjects. Art is the failure
of the subject. Objects are true."
His mind becomes itself a subject,
subordinate to a twisted sense
of historical proportion, clinging
to sublimity and preservation.
"I think of my life as a skeleton
and modern times as a funeral.
I belong to the future, like a green
sea, like the sun, like the sky."
Copyright Credit: Joshua Edwards, "The Lamp of Memory" from Castles and Islands. Copyright © 2016 by Joshua Edwards. Reprinted by permission of Liang Editions.
Source: Castles and Islands (Joshua Edwards, 2016)