Afterwards: Recollected in Tranquility -- Robert Conquest (2009)

Is it so necessary

For a wild memory

To fade and blur

Before the full charge

Of an old love or rage

Can really register?

With a life’s long perspectives

The changed picture gives

More depth and scope

As twisted faces shrink

To little more than pink

Blobs on its landscape . . .

A passion, sharp and hot,

Might once have seized the heart

To rip or scald.

So far as this can be

Recalled in tranquility

It’s not recalled.