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No, no, there is no going back.

Less and less you are

the possibility that you were.

More and more you have become

those lives and deaths

that have belonged to you.

You have become sort of a grave

containing much that was

and is no more in time, beloved

then, now, and always.

And so you have become a sort of tree

standing over a grave.

Now more than ever you can be

generous toward each day

that comes, young, to disappear

forever, and yet remain

unaging in the mind.

Every day you have less reason

not to give yourself away.

 

     Wendell Berry

 

Stephen Wilder