Old words and photographs, the stuff of age,
the archive stores the disarray of life,
preserving facts (though not the truth) of strife
and lies and deaths and birth and glorious rage.

Pure joy or drunkenness pervade the stage
on which is played the play, remembrance-rife
and full, though incomplete and lacking knife
to carve reality from image, page.

How, then, to know?  What guidance, then, to use?
These streams of words and paper images
reside above an underlying whole.

In true communion with that life, the muse
reveals the inner essence, ravages
the outer signs, reveals the inmost soul.