Memories and Recollections

—And Friday, my dear Friday, died of measles seventeen years ago come March.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac. The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove and the child draws another inscrutable house.

I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils, And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile.

Here lies my past. Good-bye I have kissed it; Thank you, kids. I wouldn’t have missed it.

How confusing the beams from memory’s lamp are; One day a bachelor, the next a grampa. What is the secret of the trick? How did I get so old so quick?

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning;

Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose garden.

What seas what shores what gray rocks and what islands What water lapping the bow And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog What images return O my daughter.

What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage Whose world, or mine or theirs or is it of none? First came the seen, then thus the palpable What thou lovest well is thy true heritage.

I hibernated in my past. 5

When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin… in the dust, in the cool tombs.

Back out of all this now too much for us, Back in a time made simple by the loss Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather, There is a house that is no more a house Upon a farm that is no more a farm And in a town that is no more a town.

I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds, Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln.

Things said or done long years ago, Or things I did not do or say But thought that I might say or do, Weigh me down, and not a day But something is recalled, My conscience or my vanity appalled.

Oh! the old swimmin’ hole! When I last saw the place, The scenes was all changed, like the change in my face.

That old sweetheart of mine.

We two kept house, the Past and I, The Past and I; Through all my tasks it hovered nigh, Leaving me never alone.

Better by far you should forget and smile Than that you should remember and be sad.

When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree. Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet; And if thou wilt, remember And if thou wilt, forget.

Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land.

Eden is that old-fashioned House We dwell in every day Without suspecting our abode Until we drive away.

A Drunkard cannot meet a Cork Without a Revery— And so encountering a Fly This January Day Jamaicas of Remembrance stir That send me reeling in.

I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old. 5

We wove a web in childhood, A web of sunny air.