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Poems (Kennedy)/Reincarnation

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4590543Poems — ReincarnationSara Beaumont Kennedy

REINCARNATION?
THEY come to all of us just now and then,Like fleeting spirit-memories,The visions of some place we never saw—Elusive, fading, phantasiesThat startle us as old familiar hauntsWe knew and loved in some lost time,Some age forgotten that has dropped awayAs dies the cadence of a rhyme.
We turn a page, and there before us liesA picture of the crawling Nile,And instantly we know, untold, what liesBeyond the rushes, mile on mile.We are not here, for we slip back again,A part of that far age and land—With Cleopatra and with Antony,Treading those wastes of desert sand.
Or in a room of guests one speaks of Rome,The room fades out, and in a breathIn crowded Coliseum we have turnedOur thumbs to signal life or death.Or else again in thought of storied GreeceWe feel a wind like fanning flame,And know that once we ran a panting raceIn long forgot Olympic game.
Or coming closer to our daily life—Sometimes we reach a stranger's doorAnd recognize it through mysterious senseAnd say: "We have been here before,"Though we are sure we never trod the pathNor saw the house until that hour;Yet there is etched upon our consciousnessThe merest detail of a fragile flower.
What can it be, this submerged other self,This surety of having seenAnd been a vital part of those lost yearsThat time's relentless sickles glean?Have we lived other lives than this today,Recast each time in varied mold,And are these prescient instincts memories,In very truth, of days long told?