The Erosion of Time

“Forgetfulness” is firmly rooted in the passage of time. The speaker (and by extension, the “you” reader) is inextricably bound to it, with time determining their mental decay. The first stanza describes this process of erosion in detail: piece by piece, the speaker loses their experience of a beloved book. At first it’s only small details, until finally the book becomes “one you have never read, never even heard of” (Line 4). Not only has the memory of the experience disappeared, but the life the speaker has lived becomes condensed; they are literally losing time.

As the poem progresses, more of the speaker’s past is lost. They reflect that they no longer remember “the address of an uncle” (Line 12), which suggests that other memories connected to this person — the times when the speaker visited this address, or what the home looked like...