Sunday, October 19, 2008

The Dark Chamber - Louis Untermeyer

The brain forgets but the blood will remember.
There, when the play of sense is over,
The last, low spark in the darkest chamber
Will hold all there is of love and lover.

The war of words, the life-long quarrel
Of self against self will resolve into nothing;
Less than the chain of berry-red coral
Crying against the dead black of her clothing.

What has the brain that it hopes to last longer?
The blood will take from forgotten violence,
The groping, the break of her voice in anger.
There will be left only color and silence.

These will remain, these will go searching
Your veins for life when the flame of life smolders;
The night that you two saw the mountains marching
Up against dawn with the stars on their shoulders;

The jetting poplars’ arrested fountains
As you drew her under them, easing her pain;
The notes, not the words, of a half-finished sentence;
The music, the silence. . . . These will remain.

4 comments:

Clockwise Cat said...

hey maree! I LOVE this poem!!!!

LOVE LOVE LOVE IT

Tx for posting.

Clockwise Cat said...

Maree, I think I love you. I love your profile. You rule. :-)

Maree said...

Thanks, Cat... you rule.

Ellen Soto said...

After all these years, I finally searched this poem. I couldn't remember where I heard it. When I was graduating high school, we all put quotes under our pictures in the yearbook. I used the first two lines of this poem, thinking that it conveyed how my experiences would remain in my life, long after my memory would fade. But a typo appeared, and instead it read: "The brain forgets, but the blond remembers." Already an obscure reference, no one had any idea what I was talking about - not even me! So I guess, the brain wants to forget, but the printed word will always remember!