Book Three: 16
I tried to cut through
all our hurried centuries,
lost in a forest within.
Men
broke by war
emerged in frightful shape—
more than human
but also less,
they were quite aware,
the sovereign dead,
that time is like a window
opening up the sad patterns of never.
As one they advanced—
—through history.
But the past does not follow
so straightforward a path
said I
(predictably in Italian),
and, burning
under their masters,
they proclaimed
the world a pendulum.
It is possible,
but this gives rise
to the often-heard complaint
that repetition is unavoidable.
Still time issues into today,
little fathers.
The years, I believe,
can be shaped with one’s hands.
The world
—its obscure moving fields,
Persian tragedies,
and countries in peace—
I had to inform
that council of the lost,
remains an instrument,
a valve instrument,
which, when waning,
is perfectly clear in the pit
—and, being given
to such classical concepts
as freedom and necessity,
laboriously continued
in the traditional way—
I believe I believe.
Copyright Credit: Srikanth Reddy, “Book Three: 16” from Voyager. Copyright © 2011 by Srikanth Reddy. Reprinted by permission of University of California Press
Source: Voyager (University of California Press, 2011)