And then one other recent poem called "Memorandum."
There's another pun.
I love-- I love puns.
And I think all poets who are telling the truth
admit that they love puns.
I think they also, if they're telling the truth, admit
that they love limericks, which is an extremely, extremely
elegant form--
[LAUGHTER]
I may misuse it sometimes, but--
[LAUGHTER]
You see, you're all laughing.
I'll tell you a story about limericks.
There was an occasion over 100 years ago
when Tennyson was alive, when Tennyson was
at the head of a banquet table.
Now, there were a lot of literary people around there.
And they were terrified by this very forbidding character
with a long beard at the end of the table.
And they got, unfortunately, onto the subject
of the limerick.
And they said that this was a form that
could only be used for comic occasions and for comic things.
And so after they'd said everything polite
they could on the subject, the subject sort of died.
And then, as the friend who told me the story said,
the cobwebs parted at the end of the table.
And the voice said, "There are persons now living
in Erith whom nobody see-eth or hear-eth, and there
by the marge of the river, a barge
that nobody row-eth or steer-eth."
[LAUGHTER]
History doesn't relate whether Alfred Lord Tennyson thought
it was funny or not.
"Memorandum."
Save these words for a while because of something they remind
you of, although you cannot remember what that is,
a sense that is part dust and part the light of morning.
You were about to say a name and it is not there.
I forget them too.
I am learning to pray to Perdita to whom I said nothing
at the time.
And now she cannot hear me as far as I know,
but the day goes on looking.
The names often change more slowly than the meanings.
Whole families grow up in them and then
are gone into the anonymous sky.
Oh, Perdita, does the hope go on after the names are forgotten?
And is the pain of the past done when the calling is stopped
and those betrayals so long repeated
that they are taken for granted as the shepherd does
with the sheep?