Retcon Five

You’re all more Clive Wearing
Than most of you realize,
And how could you realize
Such a thing if you were?

We’re here as witnesses
To help you reconstruct
What you need to construct
To know how to go on—

All continuity’s
Kept retroactively,
Made retroactively,
And the links are all us.

But we break, and we break.
You’ve got to repair us,
While our characters hold
All the tools of repair.

A planet of journals
With gaps in each sequence
And we’re just the latest,
And the first to explain.