The truant fancy of the aged
Loves to penetrate the vast and barren waste
Which we call memory,
Although its vain and profitless expanse
Is thickly strewn with rough, forbidding rocks
And angry thorns.
A host of weird, fantastic shadows
Seems to drift across the scene.
But, as our dim eyes strive to catch their form,
They fade into the distant mists, and disappear
Beyond the far horizon of the past.
They are the ghosts of things forgotten,
And, as we strive to call them back,
Another host appears:
The host of things we WOULD forget.
There are heaps of ashes here and there along our way,
Ashes of promises unkept;
Ashes of rude and hasty words;
Ashes of tender words unspoken;
Ashes of things we loved and learned to cherish
All too late, when stricken by the anguish of their loss.
Yet we press onward, for we know
That in the secret crevices between the rocks
The desert flowers bloom -- Flowers whose sacred beauty,
Unprofaned by public gaze,
Excels the storied splendor of the tropics.
We know that in the heart of that apparent desolation
There are hidden gems
More precious than the mines of earth can yield,
And so, though stones may bruise the feet
And thorns may pierce the heart to tears,
It still is sweet to wander in the desert of memory.
-- John Stevens, 1957