From “The Invention of Influence”
By Peter Cole
Freud could never be certain, he said,
in view of his wide and early reading,
whether what seemed like a new creation
might not be the work instead
of hidden channels of memory leading
back to the notions of others absorbed,
coming now anew into form
he’d almost known within him was growing.
He called it (the ghost of a) cryptomnesia.
So we own and owe what we know.
Source: Poetry (May 2013)