"Solstice."
"Each year, on the same day, the summer solstice comes.
Consummate life.
We plan for it.
The day we tell ourselves that time is very long indeed,
nearly infinite.
And in our reading and writing, preference
is given to the celebratory, the ecstatic.
There is, in these rituals, something apart from wonder.
There is also a kind of preening,
as though human genius had participated
in these arrangements, and we found the results satisfying.
What follows the light is what precedes
it, a moment of balance, of dark equivalence.
But tonight, we sit in the garden in our canvas chairs
so late into the evening.
Why should we look either forward or backward?
Why should we be forced to remember?
It is in our blood, this knowledge.
Shortness of the days, darkness, coldness of winter.
It is in our blood and bones.
It is in our history.
It takes genius to forget these things."