Requiem for Memory

- (On the Eighth Symphony of Dimitri Shostakovich)


Laughter, enduring as cloud-shapes, passes.
A telephone announces and we stare:
Behind every tone a weightless face waits.
Who are we now so intimate, bound in cloud?
And how came this to be, so suddenly?

Measured, say, at four or so kilometres an hour,
Walking - no, marching quickly like two legionnaires,
Sleeping sparingly, quick at camp,
We will arrive to see my mother, having died,
I mean the earth and stone above her
In: fifty-four days.

Hurry then my child, let us prepare quickly.
These are the aberrations that leapfrog epochs.
So long ago abated the elixir of distance
While the gene-pools of our fathers
Riding the backs of the iron albatross
Have crossed into new oblivions.

I covet the understanding of the dog
Its perfect stupid love
Its devoted obedience
The unwavering certainty in the deliverer
Its scrupulous rejection of consciousness
Having first mastered its mimicry.

Consider it: the whole league of Noah
Blank-eyed and soaked, gathered at the plank
Staring at him.

Into the rocketing years like new commuters
Huddled quickly the listening children.
We held their hands and their minds tightly with our inheritance.

Democritus, who saw it coming, merely mused of the atom.
Copernicus, gave earth wings to circle round a sudden mother sun.
And wise-guy Galileo and his quaint cylinder -
Wow, how he angered those Inquisitors!
But then those crazy guys from "Manhattan" -
What a mandate I tell ya what a mandate!

Soon in the labs the Machine denies
Little embryonic stem cells will weep in their incubators
Peeping of mother and such -
Do you see where I am going with this?

Now, check your watch: what's the date?
It is the thoroughbred hour of the hydrogen mare
And all bets are off; the race is on.

Shh! The largo - were you not listening?
O but you must listen, I will make you listen -
Close your eyes: Feel her touch?
Her fingertips on the temple?
Mother: she of the bullseye areola big as a home.

Suckle: what? You don’t remember?
Do you deny? What more will you deny?
What more would you have defended before the sirens ended?
Again: what is memory?
It is a strategy of the mind to fix you in time.

It all rides forth on a rail of tissue, my lovelies,
Memory is a gene.
Now, open your eyes:
When tomorrow comes this too you will not remember.

O you foolish!
What is language, if not memory?
The rote of human universals: lists, lists, lists!
It is as passé as instinct.
Come with your lists then, add to, I, too, will add a few.

The heroes of naive Rousseau, i.e. the happy Yanomamo,
The Jivaro, New Guineans and !Kung San:
Warriors! Warriors! Warriors!

And just this year, Hobbits! The Hobbits of Flores.
Gone forever.It happens quickly.
Dirty little Hobbits.

Will you imagine, please, martyrs big as trees
And the countless faith factories
Churning out pallbearers, pallbearers, pallbearers!
O banality of mourning!

And now the moment we've all been waiting for:
The Main Event!
And in this corner… wearing burka black…
A proud mother's son…
Appearing like a scythe-bearer
Between eye-blinks

…And his opponent
…Wearing red white and blue
A proud mother's son…
Marching under the drum…

Again, shh, the allegretto: O what carnage
Through the infinitesimal wire…
How its concussed waves crash in the ear.

…"Daddy, my legs are tired and it’s already been three weeks."

"I know, just keep walking."

"Daddy, tell me again about how it used to be."

"Sure…"

"Daddy...?"

“Dad!”

"Sorry, yes, sweetheart?"

"Can I ask you another question?"

"Of course."

"Why do you keep listening to that stupid music?"


© Rhett Talley (Commenced November 2004)