The Past Is the Only Dead Thing That Smells Sweet

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.

Meet it in your dreams, it says:

Try my breath…

I died a good death, eh?

The best.

And all the rest? The living blood that’s gone?

Dig before dawn;

It will not keep.

Only the past has no fearful scent

And pays fair rent on a buried year.

Even flowers saved in a bookmark place

Are a mouldered race and a funeral dust,

And the wedding dress in an attic sleep

Is a moonshroud weep and a ghost of lust.

Nothing, but nothing that dies can dwell

With the raw earth smell that the mind recalls

In the long falls.

Nothing, but nothing that lives can last.

Keep only the past, lad,

Only the past.