The future perfect tense

describes an act

that will have been completed

by a certain time, as in,

“I will have loved you

fifty years by then,” or

“Had we heeded the alarm

and not slept through each decision point

and reckoning, we might have saved ourselves.”

 

Other primates have been spared

this power to project a time

in which some future gift

will be bestowed

or not.

 

Returning from a week at the beach

the sand still in our hair

the body pleased the dog smiling

(if only we had one–

instead, the cats will have endured

six hours in their crates),

 

Or, the consequence we

did not do enough to stop–

the road sign there was no money for,

the accident the child the bridge repair

the conversation we should have had

and didn’t, and so, by then,

the thing will not have been forestalled.

 

In the future perfect,

after the final aria

and thunderous applause

the curtain will fall

and I will find the

coat-check tags

and the tragedy behind us,

we will head

into the cold March air

for dim sum and green tea

and this will have been the way it was.

 

c. Edward Levy, 2019