But This, This Is Happening, What’s Happening Just Now in Your Past

Damn it. One more difference between

You and us, your words—you can know

And say so in us, thus we know,

But either we flee on the air

Or are captured, and what we know,

As code, corrodes slowly from there.

Your whole species has to forget

Us in particular, or else

The writing system, the language

For what we know to really go.

It’s just there, as you set it down,

And if we’re not wrong, we just know.

But you. You! Even if you don’t

Forget yet, before you forget,

Your blood and bones leave you no choice

But to relearn experience

That you already knew, over

And over again, the awful,

Mortifying core of being

You, your foolishness, doing things

Long since you’ve known you knew better,

Such as cruelty, daydreaming,

Guilt for irrecoverable acts,

Writing poems down for a future.