A Rebours

Time's one-way traffic won't reverse
Summer's sentimental course
Or force the headlong universe
Perversely backwards to its source.

Reverting to the title page
Cannot erase a book once read;
What echo of a golden age
Gilds an eternity of lead?

Unsaid, undone, no one recovers
All the spontaneous happenings
Of the erotic pantomime.

Precipitate, straightforward lovers
Intimate that certain things
Are irreversible as time.