On Memorizing A Poem - Max Reif

[Larry Robinson]

On Memorizing A Poem

In the beginning was the Word.
Creation is involved here. 
This is not “print-on-a-page”. 
These are the flowers 
of the ages. 

Nor can you clip them 
and stuff them 
in some mental vase.
You have to plant them inside! 

First-reading scatters
the seeds of words,
atoms whirling with life, 
even the ones that seem inert.

Then: repetition 
becomes the steady hand
holding the watering can.

Imperceptibly, every word sprouts.
Secret tendrils grow day by day,
reach out, join hands,

become part of something larger,
a clause, a sentence. Finally, 
each word so tropically 
bonded with others, 
it no longer exists
as a separate thing.  

A stanza coheres. The force
continues to flow onward,
new critical mass accrues, 
the spirit leaps

across the gap to the next,
back to the one before!
Every reading, connections 
establish themselves more firmly.
New ones arise,
flourish like bougainvillea.
Roads appear: Turn Left Here.
Paths and gardens of knowing
form in the brain. Bouquets 
climb up into the air, 
perfume the air, above the brain! 

Finally, a newly-created world 
lives within you  
to be invoked when needed, 
called forth like a genie from a bottle.

Every poem or story 
made one’s own
initiates its keeper
into the long line  
stretching back 
to ancient campfires.
Every teller chants with Homer,
Valmiki, bards whose names 
we do not know,

carries this line,
the Light in eyes,
onward

	- Max Reif
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