Cosmic? Perhaps. Unprecedented? Not
to the old women sitting in the sun,
the old men planted in cafes till noon
or midnight taking in the human scene,
connoisseurs of past-passing-and-to-come.
These watchers locate in their repertory
mythic fragments of some kindred story
and draw them dripping out of memory’s well.

– from Rachel Hadas’s poem “The Chorus.” I can’t believe I didn’t know it existed until now. The whole thing is online here. This, incidentally, came for a search for an appropriate Oscar-night poem: Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s preachy “The Actor” was the worst of what I waded through first.