Memory ah memory
Where did you go,
Must you now hide
To forsake me so,
Or could you not bide
Memory ah memory,
That we end side by side!
Poetry on a canapé
A journey through Jean-Jacques Fournier's poetry
Memory ah memory
Where did you go,
Must you now hide
To forsake me so,
Or could you not bide
Memory ah memory,
That we end side by side!
Poetry on a canapé 
A profound question. Recently, I have been going through my Dad’s notes and have given considerable thought to the idea of what memory is, how it lasts, and how it becomes integrated in our daily interactions. In many ways we take on the memories of those who came before. It gives pause to how we pass along our memories. First, we must embrace those memories – both good and bad – for they define our existance. I came across this thought that I think you would be interested in:
“He was still too young to know that the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.” Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
Profound for some for emotional reasons as yours, a note taking exercise problem solving for others, or utter silence for many who simply shock at being made to deal with the reality of like issues. For me it is but a poetic expression of what we may one day be faced with, and just maybe forewarned is forearmed, if ‘may’ turns to ‘does’…
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experience on memory and memories and the influences generated, Thank you as well for reminding me of Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera. A hard book to read though. And yes his thought you refer to is something to ponder, considering I lost my father when I was eleven, at a very different time than today.
Always interesting to experience the exchanges generated by the few lines of a poem!
Jean-Jacques
Your Complaint is very common among people my age. One has to learn to live with it and make notes!
Julian Barnes wrote an interesting book about what we remember:” The sense of an ending”.
Man Booker prize 2011.
Merci Diane, for your comment. However this is not a complaint… it is simply a short poem. Not my complaint either as my memory is just fine thank you. Yes take notes is good for they in need. But if memory is gone, one may not remember where they left the notes? Could be taxing also trying to remember the notes you must find, so as to remember what you forgot. Pardon my silly humour.
As to “The sense of an ending” by Julian Barnes, I read when it first published (and most of his other books) and yes it was most enjoyable. But my poem is not about what we remember. It is about the mechanism of that human life tool we call memory. It is, in those few words, about the aspiration that its function will with any luck last the duration of our body’s life. Ideally that is only dies with the rest of us. And if it doesn’t, well maybe that’s another poem.
Jean-Jacques