What is Simple

The simple present is not so simple,

the simple past less so.

With the simple present we can say

not simply what is done now, once,

but what is carried out habitually.

O, sing the praises of the simple present

and the eternity contained therein!

Magnify its capacity to express the unity of what is,

what was and what is to come!

We break bread together.

We have broken it, we break it,

and we go on breaking it without end.

If the simple present simply expressed

what is done once, would death lose its sting?

I eat a crabcake. I die.

So that the magnificence of the simple present

lies not in taking away the sting of death

but in giving us a tense with which to

voice our perplexity over it?

O, the paradox of the simple past!

What could contain more nostalgia than this tense,

able to express the end of an eternity?

It is able to express what was done habitually,

a happiness kept and known over and over,

a bliss that could be an ecstasy of routine.

It can express

a time ended, a lost life.

Its status as a tense suggests that this brokenness

is inescapable, enshrined in language.

That's the restaurant where we met up

after he got off work and where we ate pancakes.

That is the bed where we sweat and slept.

We sat in my wigwam on Tuesday afternoons.

In the evenings we jogged and wondered about where

we might holiday and what we might have for dinner.

Enoch walked with God 300 years before he was not

because he was taken by God.

Our ways are segmented ways, ways like worms.