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# Nostalgia
- URL: https://www.qntns.com/nostalgia/
- Published: 2025-09-23T15:08:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-31T16:44:18.000Z
- Description: No - stal - gia. nóstos, to return home. álgos, to pain. This is not quite fear, not quite love, not quite the quivering from nerves above.
- Author: Quentin Staley
- Tags: #fixed-lines, Poems

Nostalgia

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No - stal - gia.  
nóstos, to return home.  
álgos, to pain.

This is not quite fear,  
not quite love,  
not quite the quivering  
from nerves above,  
no, not is it known  
till it is known,  
cannot be known till it is felt,  
cannot be felt till it occurs,

cannot occur until you go,  
till, till you go away,  
till you are away, away,  
From your Self,  
far enough away from self  
to feel your self  
when you are gone,  
when you go on,  
God not one: gone, gone.

Your duty now is the duty that. That.  
That has taken you away,  
and the duties from  
that which you came  
are duties for another day,  
duties of another play,  
and queerly, now,  
what was then banal  
is remembered, now,  
as the grandest ball.

The re-memory of a chore at home,  
the reverie of a friend once known,  
the sun it shines on every day but  
on the days you leave,  
you leave this place,  
the sun will shine,  
the shine will say,  
“Here, here, look at me  
casting shadows, lights,  
lights on streets, up, up,  
up on walls,  
on the traveling to town’s  
abandoned malls.

“Stick out your head from  
the corridor where my rays  
will splay your boredom more  
than the warmth I shine  
ever has before,

“for now that you are all alone,  
the traveling circus of this show,  
you’ll see all life,  
and then you’ll moan,  
‘I cannot keep  
what I’ve been shown.’”

Every place you’ve ever been  
is gone, is gone, is now el fin,  
just pits upon your abdomen,  
the sunken loss of what has been,  
that aching sense to clasp it all  
to hug the earth, to curl,  
to ball, to wheel, to whine,  
to scream aloud, “I love, I love,  
I love it all.”

Your knees are weak, you fall, you fall,  
you grasp at wind to freeze, to stall,  
you slow your steps to spare the scene,

your heart keeps weeping miserably  
till then at once it is revealed, all  
there is is there is to be.

Nostalgia returns. Nostalgia leaves.  
Leave, it returns. Return, it leaves.  
The teacher of equinimity:  
cease seizing the seven seas,  
up and down,  
so-so the waves,  
the ebb and flows,  
the merri-gos,  
sailing, sailing  
this carousel,  
at once it’s heaven,  
at once it’s hell,  
till all has been,  
you go again,  
you call it pain,  
you call it sin  
when all it is  
is You, my friend.