Memory
After Rene Magritte
The woman is thinking –
She places her head on the windowsill.
Her dreamhead is full of the sea and the clouds;
Memory, a stain creeping through her brain.
How often she has been at this window.
The sea tossing her its stories,
The clouds shifting their vague promises.
Today the wind brought in a leaf,
A leaf so iridescent in its youthfulness,
Memory oozed like blood down her cheek.
She coils and plaits her hair;
Turns love round in her hands.
Stows away the present with the past,
Creeps past compartments that have locked up nightmares,
The hovels of bad memories
Which shriek to be released.
Nothing can be forgotten:
The cinema of dreams brushes her sleeping eyes,
The future relies on this remembering.
One morning she may wake
And the whole of her wordhoard die on her lips.
She places her head on the windowsill.
Her dreamhead is full of the sea and the clouds;
Memory, a stain creeping through her brain.
How often she has been at this window.
The sea tossing her its stories,
The clouds shifting their vague promises.
Today the wind brought in a leaf,
A leaf so iridescent in its youthfulness,
Memory oozed like blood down her cheek.
She coils and plaits her hair;
Turns love round in her hands.
Stows away the present with the past,
Creeps past compartments that have locked up nightmares,
The hovels of bad memories
Which shriek to be released.
Nothing can be forgotten:
The cinema of dreams brushes her sleeping eyes,
The future relies on this remembering.
One morning she may wake
And the whole of her wordhoard die on her lips.
Page(s) 39
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