Poetry

I had the oddest literary moment today. I am now in awe of my memory which works in most peculiar ways.

I was sitting at this computer this morning, waking up. I had my coffee, my iphone, my solitaire game. This constitutes waking up for probably a half hour every morning. Usually I'm planning my day and having other mundane thoughts. I am not ever quoting poetry or thinking of anything one could call literary. If anything echoes in my mind, it's some top 40 song or since I've just been with my grandchildren, the songs from Blue's Clues. That's all my mind is usually up to before caffeine.

Suddenly, the line "Lay your sleeping head, my love" came floating into my brain. Immediately I grasped, half asleep, that this was not Blue's Clues. But it eluded me who had written this. I was awake enough to know I'd heard it before and didn't think I'd come up with it on my own.

Well, Google was my friend today and told me this indeed was Auden. Strange I thought since I'm not that fond of Auden because he's not a 19th century poet or Shakespeare. I would have sworn that I only had bits of memorized verse running about in my head from the 19th century and Shakespeare. It's not something I usually memorize. But wait it gets stranger.

So my brain did know the title and first line since of course they are one and the same. Ok, not that unusual. Basically that means I've heard of the poem. But what made this come into my head at all, first thing in the morning? This is odd for me. I needed to find this poem and read it to figure out where my brain was going with this.

Luckily my Modern British Poetry was right beside the desk. Here comes the weird part. I read the poem and noticed the third and fourth lines "Time and fevers burn away/ Individual beauty from/. This had been a quote in the book I was reading yesterday. My brain stored it away and kept working at figuring out where it came from. I would have told you that I didn't know this poem enough for the third and fourth lines to be imprinted on my memory. I don't think I could have quoted the poem through the first four lines. But somewhere in my head, they are there.

So a weird but nice beginning to the day. Nothing like a search for a poem to set you up for a day of racing and basketball. And to affirm that not everything from graduate school has leaked out.