The procession passed and I looked in it for my body
All these turned up and were not myself
Brought one by one the pieces of myself
They built me little by little as a tower is raised
The people heaped themselves up and I appeared myself
Who was formed of all bodies and all human things

The past the Dead The gods who created me
I live to move on as you yourselves have lived
And turning from the future's emptiness
I watch within me all the past arise

Nothing is dead but what has never been
The colored past outshines tomorrow's grey
Besides whose formlessness it can display
The sequence of the effort and effect

--from "Cortege", Guillaume Apollinaire (translated by Roger Shattuck)