What is this obsession with
things of the past
things dead and gone
people and places and lives of
days faded away?

What is this obsession with
days of the past
days living on
days and nights and loves of
our memories?

What is this obsession?
What is this need?

What is this memory,
this yearning for days past,
this give me my youth,
this if my memory is true
this if my memory is truth
this if the past lives on –
the future of the past
is still possible…

Notes: I did a quick search to make sure I wasn’t inadvertently plagiarizing the title of this poem. Turns out, there are many many texts with this title (books, poems, academic articles ranging from history to science to anthropology to literature). It is, indeed, a cultural, if not universally human, obsession…