Robyn Sarah: "Burning the Journals"

The past is useless

to me now:

an old suitcase

with mould in the lining,

heavy even when empty— 

heavy empty,

like the bronze bell

of the Russian church,

clapperless

in the grass;

so I shall have to go

on from here with less

to bank on. My peeled eye.

The way things

sing in the sun

"Burning the Journals" by Robyn Sarah, from The Touchstone: Poems New & Selected (Anansi, 1992). Copyright Robyn Sarah, reprinted with permission.

Photography credit: "The Christ Church Cathedral bell lies broken by the February quake," by Don Scott (originally color).