Remembrance

Credit: Myriams-Fotos @ Pixabay

For me, remembrance of things past has always been a waste of time, and what’s the point of tears? I don’t know. I’ve always been focussed on today. Yesterday and tomorrow hold no interest for me. What had to happen, did, and what will happen, will.

~ Saadat Hasan Manto

(Why I Write: Essays by Saadat Hasan Manto)

Old Year Leaves

Photo by Klim Musalimov on Unsplash

The leaves which in the autumn of the year

Fall auburn-tinted, leaving reft and bare

Their parent trees, in many a sheltered lair

Where Winter waits and watches, cold, austere,

Will lie in drifts; and when the snowdrops cheer

The woodland shadows, still the leaves are there,

Though through the glades the balmy southern air

And birds and boughs proclaim that Spring is here.

So lost hopes severed by the stress of life

Lie all unburied yet before our eyes,

Though none but we regard their mute decay;

And ever amid this stir and moil and strife

Fresh aims and growing purposes arise

Above the faded hopes of yesterday.

~ H.T. Mackenzie Bell

From Old Year Leaves: A Volume of Collected Verse (1883)