I have hard time remembering things
I forget people's faces, names, the colours of their sweaters
I have hard time remembering things
Promises, directions, even revelations.
Then my grandfather, who's been dead for thirty-seven years,
Appeared one night (was it a dream?) to give me a tip.
"In antiquity, in Greece or China,
As soon as people invented writing, they began writing poetry."
"Why, grandpa?" I asked, suddenly a boy of ten.
"Because they wanted to remember."
Re-member. Gathering of all my forgotten parts,
Bodily or emotional, pieces of my past
To build a machine that works
To keep me from forgetting as well as to allow
My friends to remember something
That they never even lived.
