Poetry Day - But never, to forget

Following on from yesterday's post, I thought I'd give you a snippet of poetry from Nabokov, taken from here. I can't load in pictures at work, so posts done here look boring, but perhaps I can fix that up later.

In the poem, Nabokov’s invented poet John Shade ponders what might happen after death:

I’m ready to become a floweret

Or a fat fly, but never, to forget.

And I’ll turn down eternity unless

The melancholy and the tenderness

Of mortal life; the passion and the pain;

The claret taillight of that dwindling plane

Off Hesperus; your gesture of dismay

On running out of cigarettes; the way

You smile at dogs; the trail of silver slime

Snails leave on flagstone; this good ink, this rhyme,

This index card, this slender rubber band

Which always forms, when dropped, an ampersand,

Are found in Heaven by the newlydead

Stored in its strongholds throughout the years.

Nabokov

(Mind you though, there are things I actually would like to forget, and erase completely from the history of the world.)