Classic Poem

Remember that you once lived, that you were,
that you were someplace here (I almost added
“with us in our world” but that might not be so).
Remember you had a story, even if you never knew.
Someone saw or felt you
and had to decide about you, had to make up
a history of you, even if it was a lie:
that you were nothing and easily forgotten.
And so you were, and it was too,
he forgot you, we all forgot you, and now
nobody knows that story that is always being
rewritten about someone: just as it meant
to do, it vanished with you. Even if
the perfect police erased you, knocked at your
navel or sex or the space between
with ceramic knuckle and wooden stock and slammed
through your flimsy door and scraped you
from your bed, and took you
and so you were warehoused—small
change of bones—with crawfish claws and mouse teeth
nowhere but in my charnel would-be
carnal words, nevertheless
remember. Even as I
command you this, I know
you don't. There's nothing to remember
and no one to remember it except
all of you unknown equally
not in my voice or anywhere. But that said,
even that, you have a story.











From Poetry Magazine, Vol. 186, No. 1, April 2005. Used with permission.