Kevin, Macbeth, and a lamentation for lost lines.
There are some things that really drive me insane.
Like what happened an hour ago: I was rudely awakened from a dream thanks to the ringing of the phone and just like that, my mind went blank. Except, "MACBETH!"
Let me explain. In my dream, I was sitting in a movie theater waiting for a movie to start. I'd been thinking of Kevin a lot, and I was composing a poem for him. In my dream, it was wonderful. It came together beautifully. It flowed. Except for the life of me, I couldn't remember where I knew the line that I borrowed for a part in the middle--"...full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." I knew it, I just didn't know from where. The rest of the poem was perfect.
So when the phone rang and I woke up, the entire poem was swept from my head, replaced (inadequately) with "Macbeth!" Like I couldn't figure out that part awake.
Dammit.
As much as I've been trying, I can't remember the lines. I only remember that I used that quote (significant in itself; thank you subconscious) and that it ended wonderfully with him coming home for Christmas. So in memory of those lost words, I need to dedicate this poem, one of my (many) favorites, and wonder how I keep the words of so many others locked in my brain but can't keep my own.
Lines Lost Among Trees - Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate
These are not the lines that came to me
while walking in the woods
with no pen
and nothing to write on anyway.
They are gone forever,
a handful of coins
dropped through the grate of memory,
along with the ingenious mnemonic
I devised to hold them in place-
all gone and forgotten
before I had returned to the clearing of lawn
in back of our quiet house
with its jars jammed with pens,
its notebooks and reams of blank paper,
its desk and soft lamp,
its table and the light from its windows.
So this is my elegy for them,
those six or eight exhalations,
the braided rope of syntax,
the jazz of the timing,
and the little insight at the end
wagging like the short tail
of a perfectly obedient spaniel
sitting by the door.
This is my envoy to nothing
where I say Go, little poem-
not out into the world of strangers' eyes,
but off to some airy limbo,
home to lost epics,
unremembered names,
and fugitive dreams
such as the one I had last night,
which, like a fantstic city in pencil,
erased itself
in the bright morning air
just as I was waking up.
Like what happened an hour ago: I was rudely awakened from a dream thanks to the ringing of the phone and just like that, my mind went blank. Except, "MACBETH!"
Let me explain. In my dream, I was sitting in a movie theater waiting for a movie to start. I'd been thinking of Kevin a lot, and I was composing a poem for him. In my dream, it was wonderful. It came together beautifully. It flowed. Except for the life of me, I couldn't remember where I knew the line that I borrowed for a part in the middle--"...full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." I knew it, I just didn't know from where. The rest of the poem was perfect.
So when the phone rang and I woke up, the entire poem was swept from my head, replaced (inadequately) with "Macbeth!" Like I couldn't figure out that part awake.
Dammit.
As much as I've been trying, I can't remember the lines. I only remember that I used that quote (significant in itself; thank you subconscious) and that it ended wonderfully with him coming home for Christmas. So in memory of those lost words, I need to dedicate this poem, one of my (many) favorites, and wonder how I keep the words of so many others locked in my brain but can't keep my own.
Lines Lost Among Trees - Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate
These are not the lines that came to me
while walking in the woods
with no pen
and nothing to write on anyway.
They are gone forever,
a handful of coins
dropped through the grate of memory,
along with the ingenious mnemonic
I devised to hold them in place-
all gone and forgotten
before I had returned to the clearing of lawn
in back of our quiet house
with its jars jammed with pens,
its notebooks and reams of blank paper,
its desk and soft lamp,
its table and the light from its windows.
So this is my elegy for them,
those six or eight exhalations,
the braided rope of syntax,
the jazz of the timing,
and the little insight at the end
wagging like the short tail
of a perfectly obedient spaniel
sitting by the door.
This is my envoy to nothing
where I say Go, little poem-
not out into the world of strangers' eyes,
but off to some airy limbo,
home to lost epics,
unremembered names,
and fugitive dreams
such as the one I had last night,
which, like a fantstic city in pencil,
erased itself
in the bright morning air
just as I was waking up.