Apotheosis of the Retrospective Detective
Gowan Campbell

In the next galaxy all will be one
For Time is a wire we are working through
And the wire is bent behind my back
So I can’t turn back, can’t bend my back
To slip through the crack and thus renew
The great outback of all I have known.
But next time around the bend will unbend;
And I and you and others will find
This galaxy’s past just a step away.
And I’ll make my way through yesterday
On back to any event in my life.
Liberty days at Pattaya Beach,
Drinking with youthful abandon once more;
Again the communal bed at Solebury, me and my friends cuddling like kittens, ruminating on the heat-death of the Universe.
And not just our own lives, but all of human history will be the biggest open book you ever saw. Was Richard guilty? Who was Shakespeare? When was Christ?
Was Christ? Every conceivable
question about this galaxy will be answerable in the next, while
around our misty, blue-green home,

in the startling, unfathomable burgundy of the multi-leveled, spiral-stair-bestrewn outer space place, strangely moody, wobbly clouds of sparkly dust will hunch their massive, padded shoulders, bare their pointed buttocks at the stars, and hiss and spit like cats at passing comets