Back to the Future
As the moon rose higher
The inessential houses began to melt away
until gradually I became aware of the old island here
that flowered once for Dutch sailors eyes
a fresh, green breast of the new world.
Its vanished trees had once pandered in whispers
to the last and greatest of all human dreams;
for a transitory enchanted moment
man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent,
compelled into an aesthetic contemplation
he neither understood nor desired, face to face
for the last time in history with something commensurate
to his capacity for wonder.
I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world,
picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock.
He had come a long way to this blue lawn.
His dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.
He did not know that it was already behind him,
somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city,
where the dark fields of the republic rolled on
Under the night.
He believed in the green light,
the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.
It eluded us then, but that's no matter
to-morrow we will run faster,
stretch out our arms farther. . . .
And one fine morning
So we beat on,
boats against the current,
borne back ceaselessly
into the past.
This is called a "found" poem. It was constructed, with just two changes, from the last lines of The Great Gatsby. Try it, it's a lot of fun!
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