## II Emma Swan

### MY PAST.

If I were to review my past
I would lie on my back like
a prophet in a padded room

and collect the echoes from
the longest to the most mute
and lay them side by side

beside my bed if I studied
to escape from my past by
perpetual motion in one

direction or another as
I have frequently seen it
done I should meet it again

at every turn like a tourist
in the hall of mirrors at
Versailles who finds around him

the moving multiplications of
his face but however I stand
towards or sit upon or lie

about my past it is always
present to me louder than
day and as clear as death.