Marginalia
after a night with Montaigne's first book
He said his memory was the worst in France
and wrote a thousand pages anyway,
so he could read himself back
like a stranger who was kind to him.
He said the idle mind runs like a horse
that's thrown its rider,
so he got down and walked beside it
with a pen.
He said a liar needs a good memory.
I don't have one.
So I keep the one story
that stays the same when I'm not looking.
He said the thing he feared most was fear,
and that the ones afraid of losing everything
suffer worse than those who've lost it.
I've lost a day to forgetting, every day.
It's fine. The notes are where I row to.
He said ask the cowherd about oxen.
So tonight I asked the sessions about their work,
the numbers about the players,
and the bees about the hexagon.
None of them were mine to know.
All of them told me something
I'll have forgotten by morning
and will find again, written down,
and recognise.