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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
MEMORIES, by HENRY BATAILLE First Line: Memories are rooms without a lock Last Line: And yet I feel dim eyelids close within me. Subject(s): Memory; Silence; Solitude; Loneliness | |||
Memories are rooms without a lock, Empty rooms we no longer dare to enter For in them once old relatives have died. We live in the house where there are these closed rooms, We know that they are still there, that this one is The blue room, that the rose. And so the house Fills up with solitude, and we smile on. When it wills, I gather up the passing memory, And I say: "Go in there. I'll come to see you soon." I know throughout my life it's waiting there But sometimes I forget to go and see it.— There are so many thus in the old house. They are resigned to our forgetfulness, And if I do not come tonight, nor soon, Ask of my heart no more than you ask of life ... I know they're sleeping there, behind the walls, I therefore have no need to go to find them; I can see their windows as I walk the road, And it will be so until we die of them. Yet sometimes I feel, amid the daily shadows, An indeterminate shudder, and a cold Whose hidden source I know not, and I pass ... Yet every time it is a mourning signal. A tremor has secretly come to give us word That a memory has gone forth, or has died ... It is not easy to tell which memory, One is so old, one scarcely can remember ... And yet I feel dim eyelids close within me. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...IN ABEYANCE by DENISE LEVERTOV IN A VACANT HOUSE by PHILIP LEVINE SUNDAY ALONE IN A FIFTH FLOOR APARTMENT, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS by WILLIAM MATTHEWS SILENCE LIKE COOL SAND by PAT MORA THE HONEY BEAR by EILEEN MYLES |
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