This month we are celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the opening of the Kentucky History Center, now known as the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History. The poem featured in this video was written by the 1999 Poet Laureate of Kentucky, Richard Taylor, and was read today at the Kentucky Writers' Day event presented by the Kentucky Arts Council.
Watch the original footage of the reading of the poem here:
• Kentucky History Cente...
On the Opening of the Kentucky History Center
April 10, 1999, by Richard Taylor, Kentucky Poet Laureate 1999-2000
What lies inside does not duplicate
The past - the acts, the words,
The regimental flags and willowwork
That sketch at best a semblance
Of our former selves. Instead, here,
we reclaim what we can, the gist
of who we were, landmarks on the map
of our shared journey, the rivers
into which our own rivulets
and branches feed. Here the waters
gather as a single stream
whose current holds the sums
of our accumulated past -
a flint scraper, surveyor’s compass,
manacles, a coverlet in whose weavings
we recognize both grief and promise,
a textured richness that is our own.
So we enter from the daylight
To estimate the past, not as we color it
In myth or fiction, not to worship,
but simply to know it as it was
so much as we can know it,
and in knowing offer clues to
who we were, we are, we will be.