I wrote the piece below when I was at Hope College, in 1974. I was 21. I was able to locate this thanks to the digitization of the student literary journal Opus in Hope College's Digital Commons. I wrote this in response to reading Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain (the first time I read it! in later years I have re-read it twice). I'm not sure what I meant by it.
Für Dich
In our past we were
Of our past we shall become
into our own, thus:
For what we did within the dream of memory
illuminates the darkened room wherein,
in quiet moments, yet we meet.
Our footsteps in the snow resounding
through the empty light in which we were,
Or were not. Only
we know where we might have gone,
in rings of light; snow.
Your smile was light, and
we were living, even then,
our lives gone backward.