ARCHEOLOGY Poem by Esther Jansma

If, then, we have to clothe ourselves,
against the cold, for instance, or in the name of something,
in the shreds of this or that time past,
stories and memory-props that tell us nothing

except that we were already there
in the today that existed before today -
if we can only preserve ourselves in the now
by continually re-inventing ourselves in the now,

then preferably simply by means of clothing.
You are sitting at table. Suddenly you see how someone
was crossing ice, how the cold got its grip on him

or some other fate and you say: look,
here you have his shoes, leather jacket, gloves.
Where is time? Time is here.