THE COMET MUSEUM
So the feeling comes afterward
some of it may reach us only
long afterward when the moment
itself is beyond reckoning
beyond time beyond memory
as though it were not moving in
heaven neither burning farther
through any past nor ever to
arrive again in time to be
when it has gone the senses wake
all through the day they wait for it
here are the pictures that someone took
of what escaped us at the time
only now can we remember
— W.S. Merwin, from The Pupil, 2001
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