Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. - T. S. Eliot

The difference between the present and the past is that the conscious present is an awareness of the past in a way and to an extent which the past’s awareness of itself cannot show.

"Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table.

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question...

Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"

Let us go and make our visit.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown."

And the wind shall say: "Here were decent godless people: Their only monument the asphalt road And a thousand lost golf balls."