People Forget
“Being unable to cure death, misery and ignorance,
men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think
about such things.” —Blaise Pascal,Pensées
People forget: that empires end,
That after singing, silence starts;
That after every party’s joy
We part, and blight destroys our heart.
People forget: their loved ones go,
That dirt retains its own, that tears
Affect not one tint of sky-blue;
That clouds more real than us appear.
People forget: that just below
Surfaces hyenas, buzzards, beasts
Prevail; and round us, all about
Becoming, we’re their final feast.
People forget: the clock ticks on,
As every gift incurs a cost;
As every path, however long,
Leads through a country where we’re lost.
People forget: and most of all
Forget forgetting. Thus, we stand
Before an ever-rising tide,
Like children building walls of sand.
James Sale has had over 50 books published, most recently, “Mapping Motivation for Top Performing Teams” (Routledge, 2021). He has been nominated by The Hong Kong Review for the 2022 Pushcart Prize for poetry, has won first prize in The Society of Classical Poets 2017 annual competition, and performed in New York in 2019. He is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. His most recent poetry collection is DoorWay. For more information about the author, and about his Dante project, visit https://englishcantos.home.blog. To subscribe to his brief, free and monthly poetry newsletter, contact him at [email protected].
James, this is one of those “unforgettable” poems on forgetfulness. I recently wrote a love sonnet on the subject, “I forgot to remember to forget.” Forgetting is also matched with ignorance of history. In America, we have “forgotten” to teach history, government, and what we used to call civics. This is needed at all levels of education. Then there are the intellects who choose to discard history and hence subject us to the lessons of history time and time again. There is also a corresponding juxtaposition of ignorance and ignoring. The two are closely related. Your poem points out all the forms of forgetting that incorporates these elements and redounds to our inability to make cultural adjustments based on clear historical lessons thus ensuring future difficulties.