Forgetfulness

Last stanza from Forgetfulness by Billy Collins

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

It was exactly a year ago and it was 5 AM; we were on the train station where an old woman kneeled by the edge of the platform as she took out mangoes from her groceries. She was counting and I counted with her.

A train passed by as words were uttered. I thanked you for the nice evening and I like you, really, maybe we should take this forward but whatever it is you replied, my mind insists on a sudden gust, rush of air that had already eaten your words.

The only thing that’s left vivid is the color of flowers that you had drawn on a milk carton, lost in the flood long time ago. I couldn’t be sure now. True. But what other color do flowers have in this season? On the other hand, how many mangoes was it again? Nine, I think. Weren’t you there too, did the guard took notice, and had he his whistle in his mouth as our foot strayed on the same yellow the mangoes were balanced precariously on?

I open my eyes and the night moves in with its uncertainties: toppled stacks of books, wall cracks innumerable under the moon, broken lines of thought. It’s you, and a not you, at the same time I conceive of.


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