The Paris Review

We were saddened to learn of the death of Daryl Hine last week at the age of seventy-six. Over the years, his work appeared with regularity in our pages, and his voice will be greatly missed. The following poem appeared in issue 155.

A Rebours

Time’s one-way traffic won’t reverse
Summer’s sentimental course
Or force the headlong universe
Perversely backwards to its source.

Reverting to the title page
Cannot erase a book once read;
What echo of a golden age
Gilds an eternity of lead?

All the spontaneous happenings
Of the erotic pantomime.
Precipitate, straightforward lovers
Intimate that certain things
Are irreversible as time.

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