The Art of Memory When we can traverse the plains of memory, stopping at each fire to warm ourselves before we start again on our journey, there is a world inside a world that keeps going on to infinity. If we are lucky enough to hear the eternal melody that is at work in these moments, many fine hours may come upon us. But sometimes the solace and hospitality are too much and we live with our new found companions, taking them along wherever we go, as a shadow upon our eyes. The memories of Thoreau, or the early frontier narratives of Indian captivity, are something that I have felt eternal and unchangeable in human nature, not for any piece of information they have given me, but because my melancholy has always found peace in their environment. For some the world is old or the world is new, but the point is that we tend to look at it through memory. One memorable event confounds all future celebrations; we remember so as not to forget, but we do not remember that we are able t
Unpublished Poetry Series: The Bowl-Carver by Douglas Thornton The Bowl-Carver Closeness of the night, Figure of what is intimate, Turn the strange effects Of elusive image to dreams We shall never keep, And beauty of the eye unfolds From all misfortune, Through measure of love, or fairer Sort of sight attained, A hope that in despondent mind Memory will see The action missed. All things are made By revealing space Where nothing was, like when the moon Comes up, the further As its form seems to drift away, The night deepening With inner light admits a joy Seldom incomplete. Douglas Thornton