history in things

Sometimes I try to exercise the other part of my brain, the less analytic part.  But I guess it's all connected.  Because here I am reading this poem, and it's entirely about what happens to things and experiences once time and place has decontextualized them.  So, how do we reanimate them with meaning later?
 
 . . .

The knife there on the shelf—
it reeked of meaning, like a crucifix.
It lived. How many years did I
beg it, implore it, not to break?
I knew each nick and scratch by heart,
the bluish blade, the broken tip,
the lines of wood-grain on the handle . . .
Now it won't look at me at all.
The living soul has dribbled away.
My eyes rest on it and pass on.

The local museum's asked me to
leave everything to them:
the flute, the knife, the shrivelled shoes,
my shedding goatskin trousers
(moths have got in the fur),
the parasol that took me such a time
remembering the way the ribs should go.
It still will work but, folded up,
looks like a plucked and skinny fowl.
How can anyone want such things?

. . .

from "Crusoe in England"
by Elizabeth Bishop