What is not ephemera?
Cherished mementos,
like whispers in camera,
are no more momentous
than an old man’s whims
— no value to others
if their luster dims.
So let connoisseurs
mull tediously by piece
through what we remainder
in bulk or recycle in peace.
The account of their labour
will tally the same
as our own best
treasury of kitsch. No blame
if blest is curst, curst blest:
judgment will falter,
passions flare and pall,
fashions alter.
What holds us in thrall
is the mindless cachet
we confer to what’re
just chimera anyway:
votives for prayer,
idols cast into pixels,
facsimiles which flicker
then slip, like this poem,
into oblivion.
***
I have been trying to review and organize my collection of guitar sheet music, a revealing task. Sometimes they bear, usually in the right upper hand corner, pencil notations of their price, a figure not just inflation but their inevitable fate put wildly out of whack with their value. These frayed and increasingly brittle parchment-like leafs will be recycled, if all goes well, in a bin for cellulose refuse.