What they listen to in their poiesis is the disclosure that wherever there is closure there is the possibility of a new opening, that they do not die at the end, but in the course of play. Neither do they know anyone else’s story in its entirety. The primary work of historians is to open all cultural termini, to reveal continuity where we have assumed something has ended, to remind us that no one’s life, and no culture, can be known, as one would know a poiema, but only learned, as one would learn a poiesis.
