Palimpsest

Palimpsest

Fancy people know this word

And detectives –

It means a rewritten page bearing traces

Like

Life itself-breathing in, breathing out!

Always rewriting itself on the same page

You, in yourself, and in the mirror-

On your selfie

Till it’s time to tear it up or go up in smoke

Erase,

Except-

For the impression you leave behind

The older other time, day, words, images, memories, meanings,

Written over

Once, twice, more

Countless times-

Till the history

It shows

Clearly in

Your face, your eyes, your voice-

The slope of your shoulders

Your gait

All those rewrites-

Truth in motion, the thriftiness of survival with a few lines drawn in as evidence-

Always breathing in breathing out

Under perpetual reconstruction

You can put up a shingle,

And so many tiresome people do!

But

Not what you thought it would be at first

Not at all, not really-

Changes, changing, changed

Same edifice, renovated, distressed, maybe missing bricks,

A definitely mutating owner

Everything turning like a carousel

Including the speed & scenery-

What you can see of it

Love, hate, betrayal, trust, success, failure, truth

Lies-

Beauty, endurance,

Age.

This one creeps up and sits on your shoulders

And the realisation that this building is never going to get done and ready

It isn’t meant to be

And what it means is unclear

Except for a palimpsest-

You can have a tracing of the last version for no charge at all

But

The one before it and before that has been subsumed

With maybe a bit missed

By the eraser-

Earlier palimpsest

To remind you yesterday was only the last in line

Of so many-

 And sometimes

So very few

Moments

Erased before you could take it all in

Snatched away, gone to impatience

Snuffed!

Palimpsest-

A tongue word for your tongue and palate

For fancy people-

And detectives.

Detectives who pick up blank sheets from silent tables

And use a pencil to trace

Meaning

From the gone sheet above

Assuming, always assuming-

Competing with magic ink

That can come to life once, just once, with heat

But never be secret again

But all this was before computers.

Detectives look for palimpsests on destroyed hard drives now

Picked out of garbage bins

In bits

Mangled, burnt, but yet capable of yielding secrets

Life, secrets, loot

Is not that easy to erase

Guilt, regret, happiness, inspiration

It’s all grist

To the detective

And fancy people who know words like palimpsest

and

What it means to a scroll, a leaf, papyrus

A pad, a sheet, or even a table napkin

Written upon

For the record.

Palimsests are truly for fancy people

-And detectives.

For: SirfNews on Sunday

(440 words)

April 15^th, 2016

Gautam Mukherjee