Sorting the books, the china,
furniture;
laying by the cracked, the worn;
exposing backs of sideboards,
wrenched cobwebs,
spiders running for their lives,
I didn’t know; as dark deep
polythene
gathered in the hollow sleeves,
worn tweeds, the counterfeit bulk
of sweaters,
cold earthy boots, didn’t know
at all what to keep, what to throw
away.
How shall I sort memories?
Shall I select and burn, sort out
the past?
Shall I keep the incomplete?
Where shall I store the
uncomfortable?
Shall I discard the shameful,
the rubbed, the cracked, those
yellowed, stained by time?
Are they worth remembering?
If I make neat piles of old
memories,
only save the fitting ones,
the clean, the useful and the
tidiest,
will they comfort or condemn?
Can I bear the oldest ones about
me,
huddled in my mind like birds
trapped behind the bare bars of
yesterday?
Maybe I should take them all,
sweep them up in wide and random
armfuls,
cram them into my boxed mind
to leave in the dim attic of my
dreams;
on a spring-clean rainy day
I would come across them,
unexpected,
to find that I’m not alone,
sitting careless in a dusty pool
of
half-remembered promises...
(January,
1991 - for P.H.)
