Memory doth stand like
Flame transformed to Marble.²
If recollecting is Forgetting then I remember not—
And if forgetting, Recollecting, how near I had Forgot—³
We Remember & Forget in patterns whose Labyrinthine windings
Are identification marks no less distinct than Fingerprints …⁴
Nothing is Forgotten:
All is Waiting to be Called Forth—⁵
I trust Memory: the only archivist
To savor a passage of time and Preserve it.⁶
Memory Believes before knowing remembers—
Believes longer than knowing even wonders.⁷
We reclaim our Memories—
In the form of Brooks singing silently.⁸
Memory—Native to this valley—spreads
Over it like a grove and grows into Legend—
Legend grows into Song—Song into Sacrament!⁹
Memory is the Mortar that holds
An Improvised Home together.¹⁰
¹ Bell Hooks, Appalachian Elegy 51
² Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonis
³ Emily Dickinson, If Recollecting Were Forgetting
⁴ Philip Roth, American Pastoral
⁵ Mary Oppen, Autobiography
⁶ Jessica Greenbaum, Days I Delighted in Everything
⁷ William Faulkner, Light in August
⁸ Jidi Majia tr. Denis Mair, The Child and the Forest
⁹ Wendell Berry, A Vision
¹⁰ John Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos