The Winter Palace

jennifer irvine

The Winter Palace

Most people know more as they get older:
I give all that the cold shoulder.

I spent my second quarter-century
Losing what I had learnt at university

And refusing to take in what had happened since.
Now I know none of the names in the public prints,

And am starting to give offence by forgetting faces
And swearing I've never been in certain places.

It will be worth it, if in the end I manage
To blank out whatever it is that is doing the damage.

Then there will be nothing I know.
My mind will fold into itself, like fields, like snow.

Philip Larkin

 

Forgetting. 

It seems like a good way to end the year.

Let's give endings their due.

Let's give the covering over, the forgiving, the yes, forgetting, it's place.

A time for everything, right?

And this is the time for an end.

 

Let it go.

Let it be.

Forget it.