We can change the past but nothing more,
not this blind present or the things to come.
The moment breaks before us, blurs.
What’s now is here.
It’s history that anyone can fix:
the dead demand our strong revisions.
They’ll only haunt us if we don’t,
will hunt us down,
just as old selves will feed to frenzy
if we don’t change everything they’ve said
or thought or done, add verses
to the chorus, modify refrains.
There’s hope in history, my dear,
and one day anything can happen,
when it’s ours again, to have and hold,
to cherish with the changes time will tell,
then tell again,
and each retelling with a clean, new music,
freshly scored, with skip and flutter of new life.
If anything could happen, then it surely did.
We can make it over as we make it up:
the past is all we ever have to live.