Ducks, Newburyport

by Lucy Ellmann

secretly I think the real reason I have no memory is I find the past unbearable so I kind of blot it out,

Declan Kiberd’s talk at Notre Dame, the fact that that I do remember, and he said people fetishize the past, in Ireland, the fact that he said the Irish were drunk on remembrance, like Hamlet and the ghost, the fact that I can’t understand people who want to go over and over old times, getting all nostalgic and stuff, the fact that I’m scared of old times, the fact that old times are soggy, saggy cradles of regret, about Mommy or Pepito, or even Pierre, or Dilly, or my bird costume, Phoebe’s Marlboro cigarette packet, going to the movies with Chuck, the fact that I don’t really see why I blot it all out, since it’s not all bad or anything, the fact that nobody ever clunked me over the head with a frying pan, or shot me in the abdomen, or force-fed me laxatives or acid or left me in a burning building or dropped me from a plane, with or without a parachute, or stole my husband, not yet anyway, the fact that it’s just that it’s past, that’s all, and there’s nothing I can do about any of it anymore, so why go there,

“The past should be forgotten, the future should not be foreseen, and the present should be borne proudly,”