Things of the Past

“Your great-grandfather was . . .” And Mrs. C, our tart old Scots landlady, with her stomping legs, four bristles sprouted from her chin- wart, she who briskly chats away about Montrose, founder of her clan, as though she’s just now fresh from tea with him, regards you incredulously, a bastard gargoyle off some bastard architecture, one grown topsy-turvy: “Not to know your great-grandfather! How do you live? O you Americans!” She cannot see what freedom it affords, your ignorance, a space swept clear of all the clutter of lives lived. And yet who can dismiss her words entirely? It burdens too, this emptiness, pervasive presence not a room away that, no matter how you hammer at its wall, refuses to admit you. As though you woke and in a place you thought familiar, then had a sense (what is it that has been disturbed?) of one you never met yet somehow knew—looks echoing among the dusty pictures: that myopic glass reflecting, like a sunset lingered inside trees, a meditative smile: a breath warm to your cheek, your brow: the hand (whose?) moving on your blanket in a gesture that you fail to recognize yet know it as you know the taste through oranges of sun- light current in them still— then gone as you began to stir. And for a moment dawn seems lost as in a mist, seems wistful for a feeling it cannot achieve . . . the sun breaks through, an instant medleying the leaves.