The Crossing Part One

There are poems we love in which nothing is fixed in time: the words are of the past as much as they are of the present, and their future hovers nearby, visible to those with eyes to see. What I want is the collapse of time upon itself, so that the present time of remembering merges with past time of acting, and the two become one. I will say this as simply as possible: I want to touch the flesh of those people who occupy my mind, I want to close the gap between flesh and thought, between now and then. I don't want to sleep and dream of our common pleasures while they suffer and feel the sharp edge of immediate sorrow and are bound to grief. I am human too, I must suffer alongside them... Life is doing what you will in the time before Death drops into the scene, and says casually, because he is inevitable: OK, folks, it's over. Wrap it up, get ready to move out.