We were talking at dinner about the fact
that it took three of us to remember one person's name.
Each one supplying a few syllables at a time.
I got the middle initial right or something.
So, this is a poem that addresses that problem.
It's called "Forgetfulness."
And it begins by talking about a kind of what someone called
a sort of literary amnesia where you
forget the things you've read.
John Updike recently confessed that he
was reading one of these early Melville novels like Typee
or Omoo or one of those.
And he got halfway through it and he noticed
a bit of marginalia of his own.
He didn't know whether-- so he realized he'd read it before.
But then he didn't know whether he
should turn back or continue.
So the poem is called "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.
[LAUGHTER]
It is 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.
[LAUGHTER]
Long ago, you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye,
and you watched the quadratic equation pack its bag.
[LAUGHTER]
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.
[LAUGHTER]
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.
[LAUGHTER]
Well on your own way to oblivion where
you will join those who have forgotten even 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."