YESTERDAY

I am YESTERDAY. I am gone from you forever. I am the last of a long procession of days, streaming behind you, away from you, pouring into mist and obscurity, and at last into the ocean of oblivion.

Each of us have our burden, of triumph, of defeat, of laughter, of bitterness; we bear our load from you into forgetfulness; yet as we go we each leave something in your subconsciousness.

We fill your soul’s cellar

I depart from you, yet I am ever with you.

One I called Tomorrow and was virgin pure; then I become your spouse and was names Today; now I am Yesterday and carry upon me the eternal stain of your embrace.

I am one of the leaves of a growing book. There are many pages before me. Someday you shall turn us all over and read us and know what you are.

I am pale, for I have no hope. Only memories.

I am rich, for I have wisdom.

I bore you a child and left him with you. His name is Experience.

You do not like to look at me. I am not pretty. I am majestic, fateful, serious.

You do not love my voice. It does not speak to your desires; it is cool and even and full of prudence.

I am Yesterday; yet I am as Today and Forever for I AM YOU; and you cannot escape from yourself.

Sometime I talk with my companions about you. Some of us carry the scars of your cruelty. Some of the wretchedness of your crime. Some the beauty of your goodness. 

"We do not love you"

"We do not hate you"

"We judge you"
"We have no compassion"

Only Today has that. We have no encouragement for you; only Tomorrow has that.

We stand at the front door of the past, welcoming the single file of days that pass through, watching Tomorrow becoming Today and then enter among us.

Little by little we suck out your life, as vampires. As you grow older we absorb your thought. You turn to us more and more, less and less toward tomorrow.

Our snow cumber your back and whiten your head. Our icy waters put out your passions. Our exhalations dim your hopes. Our many tombstones crowd into your landscape. Our dead loves, burn-out enthusiasm, shattered dream-houses, dissolves illusion, move to you, surround you.

Tomorrow come unnoticed. Today slip by unheeded. More and more you become a creature of Yesterdays.

Ours are banquet halls full of wine-soaked tablecloth, broken vessels, wilted roses.

Ours are empty churches where aspiration were, where only ghost are.

Ours are ghastly Pompeiian streets, rich galleons a hundred fathoms deep, genealogical lists of sonorous names, mummies in museums, fragmentary pillars of battered temples, inscriptions on bricks of Nineveh, huge stone gates standing amidst the tropical landscape of Yucatan, Etruscan Wine jars now dry and empty forever.

From us comes the miasma of inertia that holds humanity in thrall; from us comes the strength of war-makers, monarchs, and all the privileged.

We reach up long, sinewy, gray arms of custom and tradition, to choke Today and impede Tomorrow. We are the world’s of Yesterdays. If you knew enough to put your feet upon us you might rise rapidly. But when you let us ride on your backs we strangle and smother you.

I am Yesterday. Learn to look me in the face, to use me, and not to be afraid of me.

"I am not your friend. I am your judge-and your fear"

"Tomorrow is your friend"