23. For Sheridon - Robert Lowell

We only live between before we are and what we were. In the lost negative you exist, a smile, a cypher on old-fashioned face in an old-fashioned hat. Three ages in a flash: the same child in the same picture, he, I, you, chockablock, one stamp like mother’s wedding silver— gnome, fish, brute cherubic force. We could see clearly and all the same things before the glass was hurt. Past fifty, we learn with surprise and a sense of suicidal absolution that what we intended and failed could never have happened— and must be done better.