A Smile From Memory Poem by Malcolm Evison

Your smile, cast still, frozen in time,
a type of conquest. A past
Unchangeable; a victory containing
so much doom. My song is doomed -

Is it a must that enters
the open, there to be
irretrievably
lost.
Or else eternally

Discovered. Who hears my song.
The scheme towards the one
lays bare innumerable: one choice:
unlimited destroyed: and yet
are there: always there.

I grow. I journey on -
living the memories, knowing
there is no time
to which they belong. They are:
not were or will be: never again.

Once is for always.
You are smiling still.