Yes, a day is merely forever/ In memory’s shiningness,/ And a year but a gust or gasp/ In the summer’s heat of Time, and in that last summer/ I was almost ready to learn/ What imagination is–it is only/ The lie we must learn to live by, if ever/ We mean to live at all. Times change./ Things change. And K up and gone, and the summer/ Gone, and I longed to know the world’s name.
—-Robert Penn Warren, “American Portrait: Old Style”