Piano
At 66 Sandringham Crescent
an upright piano was being eased down
a long flight of stairs by three men
all wearing off-white overalls.
Backward, staccato, two stepped
descending
one
stair
at
a
time
till the taller of the two men
began to collapse in slow
slow slow motion
and the piano
leapt
to the hallway's rising floor
crashing its memories of music:
simple tunes such as 3 Blind Mice,
as well as great meaningful sonatas
of profundity and faraway,
into a scattered anarchic jigsaw
of free-loving volatile
meaningless sounds
fading
till the stricken piano
lost its memory entirely.
After the ambulance arrived (too late)
one removal man lit a cigarette
and sensing the wide-awake stare
of the householder
tapped the grey ash, with great delicacy,
into the cupped hollow of his left hand.
Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations ... The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.
Creditors have better memories than debtors.
Three things happen when you get to my age. First your memory starts to go ... and I have forgotten the other two.
I cannot but bless the memory of Julius Caesar, for the great esteem he expressed for fat men, and his aversion to lean ones.
Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms
Inside your head, and people in them, acting.
People you know, yet can't quite name.
It is a characteristic of committee discussions and decisions that every member has a vivid recollection of them and that every member's recollection differs violently from every other member's recollection.
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
I remember, I remember
How my childhood fleeted by, -
The mirth of its December
And the warmth of its July.
Why can we remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same persons?
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
There are three things I always forget. Names, faces, and - the third I can't remember.