Whereof what’s past is prologue; what to come,
In yours and my discharge.

(What’s already happened merely sets the scene for the really important stuff,
which is the stuff our greatness will be made of.)

-Shakespeare, The Tempest Act 2, scene 1, 245-254

Let us arrange
these lovely flowers in the bowl
since there’s no rice.
-Basho

The first morning of autumn:
the mirror I investigate
reflects my father’s face
-Shiki Masaoka (loose translation by Michael R. Burch)

Silence. A strangled
telephone has forgotten
that it should ring.
-Michael R. Collings