Forgetfulness
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue
or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
Notes
It begins innocently enough. A forgotten name, a book whose plot has disappeared, a fact we once knew by heart. In Billy Collins's Forgetfulness, these small lapses become an increasingly absurd journey through the mind, where memories seem to depart without warning. His humor makes the experience familiar, almost comforting, until we recognize the deeper unease beneath it. Memory gives our lives a sense of continuity. We believe ourselves to be the accumulation of everything we have experienced, yet so much of that experience quietly disappears. What becomes of our identity when the stories through which we understand ourselves begin to fade? Even the past we consider our own remains strangely beyond our control. October's Decay takes an inward turn here. Buildings crumble, seasons end, and bodies age, but the mind also undergoes its own gradual erosion. Collins reminds us, with remarkable gentleness, that forgetting is woven into the experience of living. Perhaps what makes memory precious is precisely our inability to keep it forever. #BillyCollins #AmericanPoetry #ContemporaryPoetry #PhilosophyOfMemory #Impermanence
Billy Collins, “Forgetfulness” from Questions About Angels. Copyright © 1999 by Billy Collins.