A. Siegelster is a classicist researching the reception of Virgil's pastoral poetry in contemporary literature. Originally from Los Angeles, she now lives in Winnipeg, Canada. She has recently [+]
I once went to a Jewish cemetery
More like a graveyard
So small and unheeded it was
I went there looking for ghosts
It lies in New York City
Somewhere in a corner between brownstones
Surrounded by other ghosts of history
Alive and simmering under the pulse of the present
I felt nothing there
No energy from the past nor pulse from the present
They had gone
The ghosts of the lost and still-forming
Where did they go
I asked I still ask
Do they follow the ones we lost
Back to a past as dark and black as smoke
Or have they risen again
Planting their history in the bodies now reaching for the future
Do they wish to remember or to forget
I neither remember nor forget
Nor do I know if I am only myself
Or them also
I wish those ghosts were there to tell me
Which one was right