Former Lives

It can lead to the practice of tolerance, the notion

That the soul returns to earth more than once

And remembers at least a few faint glimmers

Of the life just prior to the one at hand.

It can prompt you to be more patient with a friend

Who’s linked her fate to the fate of a man

She knows is liable to wander off

Just when she needs him. Better this life,

You’ll hear her telling herself, than the dull

Fifty-year marriage she dimly recalls

To a husband too sluggish to go anywhere.

And think how much easier it will be

To put up with the spendthrift cousin of yours,

Who has to borrow from you most months

To pay his mortgage, if you can suppose

He recalls enough of his prior life

As a penny-pincher to make him decide

To err this time on the side of extravagance.

Better by far to be left with nothing, he reasons,

Than to die as he did the last time,

With the shame of an unspent hoard.

As for your cousin’s daughter, who plays the cello

As only a few can play it but who limits her audience

To herself and a few close friends,

No need for you to pity her for suffering

From the same self-doubt that may have thwarted

Her mother’s career as a performer,

Not if you can suppose she devoted

Her prior life to pleasing crowds

Of concertgoers on every continent

And is eager now for a life more private.

At last to focus on playing each piece

As she believes the composer would want to hear it.

How refreshing, it seems to her,

And how challenging, after playing for thousands,

To play for one.