from The Rain

We have to love the past
it is our invention. Perhaps, after all
forgiveness is the proper attitude
and we should not abolish history but make a space in it
that will contain both the philosophies
of eighteenth-century boudoirs and the Kingdom of Meroe,
the Empire of Songhoi . . . and the place
where the last Carib leapt to his death
and the place where the last prince of the Palaeologi
...