She said, not loud,
"That's it.
History's the future written in past tense.
That's it."

Silence scaped radically down the blackboard face.

Waxing poetic, trying again, haltingly,
"History's a prayer rug unrolled from the other end."

Coiled silence.

Did I take something from them?
What do they defend?
What if I said it loud?

"I project the history of the future."
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

In the Rievers, published a month before his death, William Faulkner gave us this line. "Nothing is ever forgotten," the grandfather says. "Nothing is ever lost. It's too valuable."