Re [Moved] [Used] [Covered]

Authors Note

The three previous books in my Argument of Time series relied heavily on my lifelong habit of attempting to build something solid—e.g., a city, a life history, a linear narrative—out of fragments. Over time I discovered, at first to my dismay, that my efforts to do this with Ostia Antica were only partially successful because even imagination
couldn’t fill in all of its missing pieces. Although I took a while to accept the truth of the matter, eventually I was inspired to start treating the fragments as complete in their
incompleteness. This change required me to inhibit my need for order—in form and thought—but allowed me to inhabit the uncertainty at the heart of everything, which
is also what connects everything. Along the way I came face to face with the unsettling yet strangely comforting truth that all memories, including mine, are riddled with
uncertainty; therefore, knowing “exactly what happened” is impossible. In the end, an educated guess is the best that any of us can make out of this confusion . . . and as it
turns out, that’s good enough.

Book One: Visit to an Extinct City

Book Two: Metamorphoses, Book XVI

Book Three: Time Out of Joint

Reviews

The profound and inventive poems in RE[MOVED] [USED] [COVERED], the fourth book of Teresa Carson’s masterful Argument of Time, a 5-volume study and illumination of the ruins of Ostia Antica, offer stunning insights into culture, myth, and the complexity of the human psyche. At once conversational and elegant, informative and questioning, these poems rise from Carson’s conviction that “a landscape retains all of the stories that have happened in it.” In poem after poem, her keen observations and captivating voice inform arresting narratives both long past and vibrantly in the making.

—Catherine Doty

Poem from Re [Moved] [Used] [Covered]

Palazzo Massimo alle Terme

In the hallway between Mosaics and Marble Heads

Anne and I drop to hands and knees

and creep across terrazzo to look,

as closely as we can,

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Not my usual museum behavior.

at the lower half

of what remains of a grand fragmented fresco

deemed worthy of detachment from

the body of its ancient wall.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Now and then museum employees,

Lines drawn across the emptinesses

indicate the pattern of the lost—

I forget those lines for years until

Anne sends photos because when there

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++glance once then turn away.

my eyes see nothing but

the paused woman with head of curls,

blouse dropped from her shoulder turned to our air,

left hand clutching a water jar,

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Their conversations matter more than us.

right fingers resting lightly on lips and chin

(my very gesture when I’m lost in thought,

or paying close attention, or regretting)

her ghost-gaze focused on

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++I stop worrying about

something gone . . . mortal? god?

distant? nearby? remembered or sought for?

neither Anne nor I nor any one

will ever see what she still sees,

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++making a fool of myself.

but I see her.