If I did have to choose only one poem to call a favorite, Forgetfulness by Billy Collins would be one of the top ten at least. Yes, I know that's bad math but it's common knowledge that the poetry kids aren't as keen on Math class as they are Language Arts.
I have memory issues - short term, long term and those that refuse to drown. Not many months ago, I picked up a book by Anne Tyler and got half way through before realizing that I had read it years before. It's the first half of the book, when everything seemed new, that is the most troubling to me. And so, this poem speaks to my own eventuality perhaps.
It also reminds me of my GrandPaw and his long goodbye.
You have three choices for this poem: You can listen to it as you watch an animated illustration, you may choose to have Bill Murray read it to you or you may opt to read it quietly to yourself.
(1.)
(2.)
(3.)
Forgetfulness
By Collins, Billy
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.
Billy Collins, “Forgetfulness” from Questions About Angels. Copyright © 1999 by Billy Collins. Reprinted with the permission of University of Pittsburgh Press.
