Who Are We?
Not that I remember, but that I am
Memory, am all that has befallen
Unbroken being and knowing
Whose flow has brought me here, laden with the forgotten
Times and places, once here and now
Of those who were, from day to day,
From life to life, as I,
Presences of that omnipresence without end or beginning,
Omniscient through our being,
That brings and takes away the unremembered living
Moments of joy and wisdom, the once-familiar
Rooms and temples and fountains, the long-ago gardens
Of a thousand summers, music once heard,
Travelling through me and on, like a wave
Of sound, a gleam
Irrecapturable. And who are we
Who gather each one leaf, one life of the myriad fold tree
Of the lost domain, and mourn
The flowing away of all we never were, or knew?
Promises, messages reach us, instruct us,
The untold, the untellable, undying
Heart’s desire, resonance
Of elsewhere, once, some day, for ever.
Notes
Raine reframes human identity not as a heavy, static vessel of personal history, but as a fluid conduit through which an "irrecapturable" wave of universal experience temporarily passes. It introduces a sublime, cosmic lightness to the July curation, suggesting that the self is simply a single leaf on a myriadfold tree, fundamentally unburdened by the exhausting need to possess or permanently anchor the passing hours. By shifting our perspective from the claustrophobic grief of individual loss to the vast, ongoing current of an eternal omnipresence, the poem allows the guarded ego to dissolve gracefully into a weightless resonance of the infinite. . #poetry #existential #spiritual #lightness #life