Remembrance happens but we must remember
It’s not just rewindplayback
Think of it that way and it’s just degradation
It’s really more like rebuilding the buried city
The great fragments of stone scattered randomly
The connective wooden members having disappeared completely
Majestic dome fallen through the floor
The colored tiles long past delivering
Image of bird or dolphin or lovers entwined
Which is why old home movies seem gritty documentaries
Of unfamiliar social aggregates in distant geographies
And remembering a second time
Means allowing the temple the houses grand and minor
The shops and thoroughfares and premises of artisanry
Again to decompose and again to reconstruct them
And each successive reconstruction begets
A form ever more diverse from that of the original metropolis
Ever more sketchy schematic and stylized than any predecessor
An alchemy of novel configurations neither accurate nor inaccurate
For the mind will supply the lost details or generate them
In the superb guesswork of lively simulacrum
And we might regret the inevitable distortion that follows
Or celebrate in our pride the artifact ever new
Cubist impressionist abstract expressionist

Little boy in battle fatigues
Hurls himself to the ground
Having taken or eluded
Imaginary machine gun fire
Played out in muted tones