Winning and Losing

Presentists, eternalists,
Perspectivist physicists,

Running their chronologies
In forward and in reverse,

The Aeneid to Amis,
Amis to the Aeneid,

What did they think they played at,
Batting around their symbols

Presented to them as gifts
From the pasts they'd created,

Pasts that never existed,
Pasts that always existed?

Winning and losing outline
The boundaries of a game,

And a game has boundaries
Because it's only a game,

And the function of "only"
Is to mark the unreal edge

Of the real and the unreal,
A real device, the only

Real device, the invention
Of what never from ever.