The horses of Parmenides carried him back and in
toward a nameless realm that welcomed him,
opening its gates to let him through.
Memory works that way:
out of a haze of images, one pull,
sudden, urgent, unpredictable.
More and more of life’s behind me now,
past opening as future disappears.
Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole,
passed things floating upward as she fell.
Down and up – how briefly their paths crossed!
Marmalade jar, bookshelves – nothing lost,
everything transient. To be so drawn in
and back and down, to feel oneself being borne
darkly, fearfully afar – that’s Shelley’s phrase.
It’s more hermetic in Parmenides,
whose vision both compels and leaves in doubt –
fragment or dream too coded to make out.
The weight of years ordains that more and more
every threshold is interior.
Guardians of that mysterious gate,
let me in before it is too late.