Forgetfulness

Forgetfulness is like a song
That, freed from beat and measure, wanders.
Forgetfulness is like a bird whose wings are reconciled,
Outspread and motionless,--
A bird that coasts the wind unwearyingly.

Forgetfulness is rain at night,
Or an old house in a forest,--or a child.
Forgetfulness is white,--white as a blasted tree,
And it may stun the sybil into prophecy,
Or bury the Gods.

I can remember much forgetfulness.

~ Hart Crane

The song goes on its way, meandering the halls of time, heedless of tempo or space. The bird could spend hours bathed in such timelessness--sea and sky might as well be one and the same. Water falls, aiding the dreams of the sleepers beneath roofs in the dark...perhaps in the woods where only the trees remember. Children have ephemeral soap-bubble emotions: grudges, tears, and laughter follow where old moons go. There is blankness on the face of it, or of the limbs bleached by the ceaseless, roaming wind. No ending or beginning, alive to nothing but itself. The sybil might blink and speak and forget to remember that eons have gone by with silence as the only answer. The Gods follow the opposite course--smothered by centuries, decades, years of disregard.

I write this to recall the blessings of oblivion.