Does it ever suddenly strike you
that you will never meet your historical fave. You can be talking about them to someone as if about an old friend, and then it hits. You will never know them, your oldest and most influential companion. Never be able to discuss with them a controversial aspect of their work, or debate a finer point of philosophy, never be fated to wander arm in arm around their city. Yet, sometimes, when the space is quiet and the warm evening light is fading, you can feel them beside you. Perhaps you are walking where they have walked, or curled up in a forgotten library corner, deep in the same speeches they once gave, and some intangible aspect of their presence is there, faintly. Satisfied that someone has been touched by their legacy; regretting, too, that cruel time forbade your meeting. They follow your one sided debates in the same cobbled streets through which they had been accustomed to walk with silent interventions, too much and not enough all at once.
