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Sometimes I hear my father's voice, sometimes my son's, in mine:
the modulations of two who have died—
passing beyond these tides of being. Gone,

but still their forms appear as though in sudden shafts of sun:
Dad in the corner at "39"
smoking his pipe; John standing at my desk

smiling, talking to me of school, or work, or politics.
Both of them are real to me today,
more real than half the people whom I meet,

as if their being, somehow, is in very loss confirmed.
Reality may be a being in mind
and who knows at what point the mind has end?

The world that is not here may be a world of sun and trees,
a world of man's potentialities:
our absences may there be presences.

Perhaps, in the long run, all mind, all memory is shared
just as the body's basic stuff is shared
that crumbles and renews, as time moves on

(illusive time—whose motion may be but a long day's dream!)
in other bodies, other being. Yes,
likely we are one substance, of which mind

matter, are forms. Voices of past and future speak in ours
and somewhere, all is known—as I know now
father's and son's reality in me.