Do not believe that those who’ve died
lie down. They rise when we engage
their words which have become our guide,
reborn each day upon each page
we write. Their words are changed no less
than ours by these encounters, though
dead authors must feel some distress
to see their meanings melt like snow.

The truth advances like an army,
the past defeated by the present,
but though its stale air is not balmy,
the past may yet be incandescent
when reinterpreted, and while
the snows of yesteryear are never
the same ones that today beguile,
they may, like Archimedes’ lever,
raise us to heights where we perceive
in later snows a beauty which
becomes a tapestry we weave,
ice-memories within each stitch.
4/1/06

gershon hepner

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/archimedes-lever/