Invitation au voyage

And the lady returned to her husband's chamber
saying We're not safe here.  

He only wanted me and now he knows 
he can't have me let's take French leave. 

That's how the old stories begin—in mid-
thread, with a teaser of intrigue.  Later 

the sword will split the stone, we'll dispose    
of the Puce Knight, the whole dramatis personae

—directly or by indirection, that's what we're about
to find out—but hang on, soyons calme.  

Let the gaze linger awhile longer
on the figure of the Lady, silvery

in the moonlight flushed with indignation.  
The end will be bloody and soon enough.

Why rush to judgment day?
All but one knight will fail, we know from the start

and only in dreams do you wander for a year and
a day and return to the home you left.
 


The Progressive Interview
(Harold Pinter, March 2001)

I don't know.  How the hell 
can I say what changed my life?
Perhaps all I can tell you is that 
at the age of thirteen I fell madly in love
with a girl who lived on my street.
It wasn't her fault, but 
I became very unhappy.  I mean, 
we had a certain kind of relationship, 
very young.  But I think 
the fact she was inevitably going to go on to others
and wasn't going to be mine forever . . . 
I was writing a lot of poetry to do with precisely that.

My father was a tailor, you know.  
He used to get up very early to go to work.
One morning he came down and found me
sitting at the kitchen table, writing,
I think I was almost in tears.  And he said,
"What are you doing?" quite gruff.
And I said, "I don't know, Dad, 
I don't know what I'm doing."

He took what I was writing and looked at it.  
Then he gave it back to me 
and just patted me on the head and went to work.
He never referred to it again.  
He didn't say, "Oh, put that rubbish away,"
or anything like that.  He just knew 
I was going through the anguish of love.
And I always loved him for that.
 


Memento

Themistocles, offered the gift of memory, wished instead for forgetfulness, a gift Funes the Memorious might have cherished too. Funes, as his friend Borges wrote, remembered each detail of every moment of his life, so that he could not understand why a dog standing should be called by the same name as the same dog sitting, much less why two different creatures should both be called dog. In the end, Borges concluded, his inability to forget differences left Funes unable to reason, unable to think.

To help unravel his mystery, the amnesiac Guy Pierce in Memento resorted to tattooing key memories into his skin. But the one thing he'd have bargained anything to forget—that memory never ceased tormenting him.

Women forget the pain of childbirth, I am told. If not, we might not be here to wonder about these things, not so many of us anyway. But what if all pain were so readily forgotten? You wouldn't think to take your hand out of the fire, or to dress warmly in winter.

Let forgetfulness be selective then: excise only the tumours of shame that cling to healthy memories—untake-backable things done or said when, as we say, I wasn't myself—that may be the one memory someone has of us.

Whose version is correct, then? Isn't my self my own, to remember or forget? Coming to terms with yourself (I read when first calling myself a writer) means not only facing the mistakes you made but accepting their role in making you who you have become.

The grave forgets:
don't go there
just to think of me.
 


Dear Jeremiah

	And what if it's true
		your sister did worse?

	Most anyone caught in the act
		confesses.  But you?
	
	You may have forgotten, child
		but I knew you when you could do no wrong.

	So tell me you'll come visit Sunday
		and I'll barbecue a roast.

	Even if the flood maroons me here
		I'll leave the light on over the door.