Memory doth stand like
Flame transformed to Marble²
If Recollecting is Forgetting then
I Remember not – and if Forgetting,
Recollecting, how near I had Forgot³
I Trust Memory – the only Archivist to
Savor a passage of Time and Preserve it⁴
Memory – Native to this valley – Spreads
Over it like a grove and grows into Legend –
Legend grows into Song – Song into Sacrament⁵
Memory Believes before Knowing Remembers –
Believes Longer than knowing even Wonders⁶
We Remember & Forget in patterns whose
Labyrinthine windings are Identification
Marks no less distinct than Fingerprints⁷
We Reclaim our Memories – in the
Form of Brooks Singing Silently⁸
Memory is the Mortar that holds
An Improvised Home together⁹
Nothing is Forgotten: all is
Waiting to be Called Forth¹⁰
¹ Bell Hooks, Appalachian Elegy 51
² Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonis
³ Emily Dickinson, If Recollecting Were Forgetting
⁴ Jessica Greenbaum, Days I Delighted in Everything
⁵ Wendell Berry, A Vision
⁶ William Faulkner, Light in August
⁷ Philip Roth, American Pastoral
⁸ Jidi Majia tr. Denis Mair, The Child and the Forest
⁹ John Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos
¹⁰ Mary Oppen, Autobiography