Perhaps I’ve lived ten thousand lives

As boastful husbands and down-trod wives

Rich adventurer and frail old crone

No longer called by names once known

 

Captain of industry, pauper and fool

Adulteress drowned by the ducking stool

Each person I might one time have been

By present day eyes cannot be seen

 

Past deeds all gone like smoke in space

Of fortunes and debts there is no trace

And material things, all left behind

Cannot be claimed by this clean-slate mind

 

Each new existence, once the die is cast

Denying our knowledge of times long past

No enduring shadow of a former self

Can ere be found by any who delve

 

But isn’t some imprint left somewhere

In a cosmic library recorded out there

Perhaps by some power that plans our fate

Knowing existence isn’t a random state

 

If we kept the memories from earlier days

We might be able to improve our ways

Then born once more to make our mark

We needn’t start afresh, in the dark

 

But covetous claims on things once thine

Might clog the courts with writs malign

Perhaps it’s best to start afresh

As infants wearing virgin flesh