Summary

The speaker describes the process of losing one’s memory. It begins in fragments, forgetting the details of books until you can’t remember them at all. The speaker feels as if their memories have taken off, as if on holiday, and have become unreachable. Little by little, all the knowledge and facts their mind once held are slipping away along a river of forgetting. Soon, the speaker will become lost entirely. At night, they get up to look things up that they once knew. The moon outside their window reminds them of a poem they can no longer remember.

Analysis

“Forgetfulness” begins in medias res, with the speaker describing in a list format the erosion of their memory of a favorite book. The first line is subtly self-reflective: “The name of the author is the first to go” (Line 1). In this moment, the...