remembering, off by heart

generally speaking, we know nothing generally.

this-ness.

Not quite your old self. It takes time for you to catch up. To be oneself again. When you look into the mirror you don't look too closely. This hollow figure before you, somewhat unreal. And your voice? "You sound just like your father!" Z says. A few inherited gestures, a particular tone of voice, is all that links you to the past. What will be remembered, what can?

the swami to R's photo: " Will you remember me? No, I think you will not. What can we be to one another?"

In the early hours, when morning is just breaking, you pace up and down reading Lowell-when others are reading the Qur'an. Why this Platonic condemnation of the poets, you wonder?

The graveyard's soil was changing to stone
so many of its deaths had been midwinter
Dour and dark against the blinding snowdrifts...

where the burning cold illuminated
the hewn inscriptions...
Frost had given the names a diamond edge.

Outside, a garish light, the colour of a ripe watermelon, beams out from the darkness, like a life-buoy in a tempestuous sea. Inside, the sheltered life. Crumpled bedsheets. R blissfully asleep. Has learnt how to laugh. Which is half the trick. H, out like a drunk. Which is the other half. The starred frost on your heart, an emblem of your forgetfulness.