Locust Years

Today I discovered the poet Billy Collins, who's written a couple of simple but poignant poems on forgetfulness and memorisation. I have a horrible memory, and gathering the past always feel like following a trail of bread crumbs - some have disappeared, some are lodged amongst bramble, very few are whole and worth the keeping. A slow and futile scramble.

I wondered if, in the new heavens and new earth that I look forward to, that my memory will be restored to me: all the jokes that were so good and that I swore to remember, the unforgettable quotes, consigned to notebooks but irretrievable to memory, the smell of a new city overseas, the indescribable look on a half-obscured face, countless sermons heard and gone the following week, lines of music, the lost optative verb forms, books, poems, dates, numbers, faces, places. Even the piercing moments of pain or shame, might they be given back to me, and take on a different shade of feeling?

I love that verse in Joel, when God promises, after a severe famine in the land of Israel, to "restore to you the years that the locusts have eaten." I hope those words apply metaphysically too.

*******

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,
not 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.

- Billy Collins