Do not believe that those who’ve died <br />lie down. They rise when we engage <br />their words which have become our guide, <br />reborn each day upon each page <br />we write. Their words are changed no less <br />than ours by these encounters, though <br />dead authors must feel some distress <br />to see their meanings melt like snow. <br /> <br />The truth advances like an army, <br />the past defeated by the present, <br />but though its stale air is not balmy, <br />the past may yet be incandescent <br />when reinterpreted, and while <br />the snows of yesteryear are never <br />the same ones that today beguile, <br />they may, like Archimedes’ lever, <br />raise us to heights where we perceive <br />in later snows a beauty which <br />becomes a tapestry we weave, <br />ice-memories within each stitch. <br />4/1/06<br /><br />gershon hepner<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/archimedes-lever/
