Keeping (and Telling) the Past

In this poem, Cooley asks us to consider the ephemera of the drawer of writing left behind at death. It’s a haunting poem, with eternity watching, the dead being so much more numerous than the living, and the lucky of us knowing someone will come and open the drawer. The poet says, “We like to watch you read. Read us again,” and the archivist recalls how much depends on collections coming into care, and before that, pen to paper, and before that, literacy itself. We read (and write and archive, here the verb) for those who cannot, who could not, who had no drawer to place papers, as well as for those who did.