Out Dusty Windows

There’s something charming,

No, that word’s not right,

Something arresting

To discovering,

Thanks to translation,

Ernaux’s notation

In Getting Lost, on

The fall of the Wall—

History again

Becomes, she observes,

Unpredictable.

It’s that word, again,

At least in English,

That’s arresting—or

Again plus becomes.

History again?

History becomes

Unpredictable?

You feel like scoffing,

When has history

Been predictable?

But that gives you pause.

Of course history

Is predictable.

In the finest grain

Of nights and days, in

Its grandest arches,

History trudges

Boringly along

As a mill-wheel mule.

It’s in the middle

Range history is

Unpredictable,

The range which happens

To most concern you,

Across the decades.

This is curious.

Why would history

Be most surprising

At a lifetime’s scale,

At middle distance?

You neglect Ernaux

For a while, staring

Out dusty windows.

History again

Appears confusing,

Narratively strange,

Like a horizon,

Simple at the rims,

But complex across

The span you transit.

Could prediction be,

Like God, the problem,

Appearing to solve

A problem it makes

Worse, or just creates?

Without prediction,

Lust for prediction,

Prediction status,

Could uncertainty

Be just what goes on,

Never more or less

Unpredictable?