Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'/Let us go and make our visit. - T. S. Eliot

What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What’s not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.