Déjà Vu.

As on my way, I feel the pull of country shires
as if I'd been before and lived by country lanes
in circumstances long ago. It seems the very air expires
an ancient breath I breathed. My thought regains
a nuance; in a fleeting moment caught, retires –
of one unknown to me those thoughts my memory retains.

A happening that echoes from a far recess
and dulls as quickly as it came, as if a ghost,
unwilling to be seen but haunting ne'er-the-less
at times has sudden need, reminds me as its host
that such is there, but why?  Can only guess
at what a secret view affords and hope the most.

If I, then all mankind have known, and we have walked
oft-times an older and perhaps most ancient way,
and known before the rub of varied chance, and talked
in stranger tongues of what we'd not admit today,
and cried to gods - as novel then as now - and baulked
at an admittance of another's creed of which to pray.

Have known our kinsfolk in another guise. Of humble mien
or lofty state, have burned in shame, or, known and famed
for kinder deeds, been judged from narrower views and, seen
through ways accustomed by much harder times sore blamed
or lauded to excess. Though but for where Man's past has been
God's natural world would be unmarked and Eden yet unnamed.

As on my way I feel this subtle pull. There must be more,
 that holds me firm, engendering thought that indicates
a morrow due:   This being so, does not a curtain draw
aside that I may glimpse a simple logic and dictates
that yesterday's tomorrow is our constant now, therefore,
come the morrow this day lived was real, whenever viewed;
as déjà vu insinuates.

                                                                      by    John  Plumridge  10th may 1997    

      Deja Vu           click play button for streaming audio                                                 HJP.10.5.97