On reading Proust during quarantine

The imps of antiquity hum

in my lungs, skipping echoes

across the wide open spaces,

the high-ceilinged places

packed with notes of eras past

in this pretty little

braided

skull of mine.

A vestigial organ,

the twentieth century mind,

but it has not dissolved

(I’ve not evolved) completely:

still the melodies ache sweetly

in the catacombs—

the dome under which

I slip modernity

(an envelope beneath

a foreign door).

I hear it faintly,

the pops and murmurs

of fragranced Parisian candle wax,

the sight of children riding past

and back again,

red jackets on copper wheels

(and other trinkets from the pockets

of before).

It feels—

as I read of tea-soaked madeleines

and stare at a golden world on pause—

that all I’ve felt,

that all I am

not is, but rather,

was.