‘The past is never dead. It is not even past.’ That was the view of Southern Gothic novelist William Faulkner who also believed, I suspect correctly, ‘There ain’t nothing I got that whiskey won’t cure.’ He was expressing an idea that has often inspired poets: namely, recollections of the past coexist with fears about the future. And this coexistence is in the present moment. We have only the here-and-now. The past is a present memory and the future is a
