Variations of the Imperfect

‘It is said that the imperfect tense

which was a name for something

unfinished

is no longer in the textbooks

for newcomers to the language

But in me it still lives on

as in an unresponsive conversation

with what has been’

With Variations on the Imperfect, Nina Burton returns to poetry with a collection of poems on the tense of life. In these concentrated poems, there is a dialogue between the completed and the unfinished. Which forms apply to the future, to the past?