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And then one other recent
poem called "Memorandum."

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There's another pun.

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I love-- I love puns.

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And I think all poets
who are telling the truth

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admit that they love puns.

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I think they also, if they're
telling the truth, admit

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that they love limericks, which
is an extremely, extremely

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elegant form--

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[LAUGHTER]

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I may misuse it sometimes, but--

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[LAUGHTER]

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You see, you're all laughing.

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I'll tell you a story
about limericks.

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There was an occasion
over 100 years ago

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when Tennyson was
alive, when Tennyson was

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at the head of a banquet table.

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Now, there were a lot of
literary people around there.

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And they were terrified by
this very forbidding character

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with a long beard at
the end of the table.

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And they got, unfortunately,
onto the subject

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of the limerick.

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And they said that
this was a form that

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could only be used for comic
occasions and for comic things.

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And so after they'd
said everything polite

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they could on the subject,
the subject sort of died.

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And then, as the friend
who told me the story said,

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the cobwebs parted at
the end of the table.

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And the voice said, "There
are persons now living

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in Erith whom nobody see-eth
or hear-eth, and there

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by the marge of
the river, a barge

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that nobody row-eth
or steer-eth."

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[LAUGHTER]

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History doesn't relate whether
Alfred Lord Tennyson thought

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it was funny or not.

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"Memorandum."

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Save these words for a while
because of something they remind

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you of, although you cannot
remember what that is,

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a sense that is part dust and
part the light of morning.

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You were about to say a
name and it is not there.

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I forget them too.

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I am learning to pray to
Perdita to whom I said nothing

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at the time.

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And now she cannot hear
me as far as I know,

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but the day goes on looking.

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The names often change more
slowly than the meanings.

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Whole families grow
up in them and then

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are gone into the anonymous sky.

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Oh, Perdita, does the hope go on
after the names are forgotten?

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And is the pain of the past
done when the calling is stopped

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and those betrayals
so long repeated

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that they are taken for
granted as the shepherd does

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with the sheep?

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