I've visited many museums throughout my (albeit short) lifetime, but my recent trip to a museum in Italy was unusual in that I felt a sharp sense of loss, along with the usual feeling of the past being preserved. 

Here, history is kept in glass cases,
coffins, to keep away the dust
that so easily obscures the exotic.
The past gleams like a jewel from velvet pillows,
to be caressed eagerly by the eye
as it reaches through the glass
to snatch at a different time.

Breath clouds the partition
between visitor and Roman matron,
lost samurai. The mind fumbles
to place a gold torque around a saxon’s neck.
But the imagination fails, so busy groping
for a complete image. Items drop
to the floor of the mind. A sigh,

And then it is time to move on
to another case, another find,
to inspire that sense of retainment,
of gain as solid as stone tablets, polished marble.
But the rings are empty. The person who once sat
to be painted, sculpted,
has left their stool. There is loss.

Who was left behind- the objects by the people,
or the people by the objects?
Perhaps this is only a kind
of lost property, after all;
the artefacts have the air of waiting.