All I said I unsay now,
Speaking backwardly,
Raveling webs of words,
Reversing entropy.
But that is not what I meant at all
In order to mean something new,
Trying to re-verb sunrise,
Trying to undo the dew.
Or stirring the coffee slowly.
As if retracing a rune,
Hoping the sugar will undissolve,
Emerging pristine on the spoon.
I’ve always been fascinated by the notion of reversal, from turning back time to building order out of ever-encroaching disorder. On a universal scale, this act is impossible, but on the local level, one can make little inroads: writing a poem, for instance. I started out with just the line “All I say I unsay now.” The rest is fanciful, I admit, but I had fun. The poem appeared originally in Light, when it was edited by its founder, John Mella. He’d rejected a few other poems, but this one he took at once.
David Galef has published over two hundred poems in magazines ranging from Light and Measure to The Yale Review. He’s also published two poetry volumes, Flaws and Kanji Poems, as well as two chapbooks, Lists and Apocalypses. In real life, he directs the creative writing program at Montclair State University.
You can see more of his work at www.davidgalef.com
Form in Formless Times 
David Galef’s “Entropy” reminds me of two limericks of mine …
Hawking, who makes my head spin,
says time may flow backward. I grin,
imagining the surprise
in my mother’s eyes
when I head for the womb once again!
—Michael R. Burch
Hawking’s “Brief History of Time”
is such a relief! How sublime
that time, in reverse,
may un-write this verse
and un-spend my last thin dime!
—Michael R. Burch
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Thanks Mike. There do indeed appear to be commonsense objections to some scientific speculations!!
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I think Hawking may have “retracted” the backwards time travel thing, later.
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Or retracted it earlier, of course… 🙂
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Time travelers need never be inaccurate … they can just go back and correct their mistakes!
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