76. The Archival Enterprise

 

 

what we have | is what we have saved

necessary or useless | worthless or transcendent

you realize | I hope | how you created the world

we live within | echoes of history

the weight of knowledge | how passion is

your purpose | but with focus

to give it power | these little pieces

of paper | strewn across a life | cohere

enough to form a pattern of meaning | meaning

they carried discrete bundles | of the past into

the minds and bodies of those who found them

archives are a virus | they infect the mind with

ideas | a pathway to reconstructing the future

a means by which | we imagine the past

the bricks we use | to build the fortress we call

humanity | the human struggle to mean

to carry a purpose | to exchange contemplation

for creation | to make something new for us

something that mattered | to help create

a little essential corner of the world | big enough to be

 

we are in the end not necessary | but essential

guardians of knowledge | fallible in our mission

the sieves of facts | the keepers of falsehoods

the mirrors of mirrors | we do not see the past

except as a simulacrum of the future | hard upon us

heavy to lift or bear | inscrutable to interpretation

the whiff of meaning | the recalcitrance of the record

to tell us what we want | to provide us what we need

to stay immutable | to resist reinterpretation

these small handfuls | of paper and dry ink

these burgeoning baskets of digits | bloodless yet

bloody and beating with human | blood and heart

history yet mysterious | the present | a fact in transition

to myth | we deal in information | approach knowledge

leave questioning | the unstable surface beneath our feet

we do not make the meaning | we find the context

for it | we help it survive after creation

give it the grace of | preservation

hold onto it | as we hold onto our memories of

days long gone | but dear and deep and still

I am not a prophet | but I speak for all of us

even those who do not realize | I live | and have

lived in the presence of | your mien and manner

the way you bend | at the knee to speak

to someone seated | the openness of your hand

in the shape of friendship | and your vibrating voice

as you preach | that permanent sermon

the depth of the archives | the reaches of the human heart

how we require | to be human | respect for

the humanity we cannot even present | why we cry

upon the thought of us | so human in our brokenness

not good enough for the earth | yet the best hope

we can have for | each other when we reach in

to the heart of our failures | and see at least our

beating hearts | beating like hands clapping

for you | waiting for you | hearing from you

from the depths of our | hopes | so fragile and lost

we cannot recall | what we have done

to be afforded this life | one among yours

a life made for the world | one made for the future