What is original then if everything
that has happened to us has happened
to someone else before? Every great love
the same love but also the only one,
every death the same death that couldn’t
have brought the universe to a halt but did,
that couldn’t have made you speechless, heart
stopped in its tracks, every nerve burning
its uncurtained filaments in a lighthouse
at the end of the pier— Rich green, slippery
with moss: whose names are these, carved
into planks and on the faces of stones?
In response to Via Negativa: Palimpsest.