Tuesday, July 18, 2006

"I've Forgotten Myself Yet Again"

I've forgotten myself yet again,
I've made myself hard to find,
I've hopped aboard a different train,
And left myself behind.

Now I trawl my memories up and down,
Searching for my colour, my stamp,
But for every month and in every town,
There moved a different man.

I wished a question and a puzzle to be,
To all those whom I met,
But now a question and a puzzle I am to me,
I realized this when...I forget.

I pounce on this and seize on that,
And of these things form a shape,
But there's no rest or peace to be had,
In my ill-fitting, guesswork drape.

I see that people's lives are baskets which,
They stock up from bottom to top,
My zigs and zags have made a hole,
From which everything did drop.

Now I'm a self-forgotten, unsteady man,
At least now that can't change,
Or can it? - it can't! - or perhaps it can
I feel - I feel so strange.

O friends! you say you know me well,
You can tell when I am near,
You hide the food behind the fridge,
And stow away the beer.

You know my essence, my quiddity,
Help piece me together once more,
Let me not an unmanned frigate be,
Drifting from bank to bank, shore to shore.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"No man can say what he is. But he can sometimes say what he is not. People want the man who is still seeking to have already reached his conclusions. A thousand voices are already telling him what he is found, and yet he knows that this is not the case. Should he carry on seeking and let them talk? Of course. But, from time to time, we must defend ourselves. I do not know what I am looking for, I name it prudently. I withdraw what I said, I repeat myself. I go backwards and forwards. People nevertheless call upon me to deliver the name, or names, once and for all. Then I object; are not things lost when they receive a name? Here, at least, is what I can try to say."
- Albert Camus 'The Enigma'

"But there is in every man a deep instinct which is neither that of destruction nor that of creation. It is simply the longing to resemble nothing."
- Albert Camus 'Ariadne's Stone'