15 JULY 1989, Page 26

Against Memory

Be it a girl or a great book or vista by the sea, I've found it comes to mean much less to me as the years go by, For he who loved it must be shaped afresh by memory.

And this involves trying to reconstruct precisely why This thing or that may have appealed, while at the same time knowing Chance can sway, and guessing total commitment is a lie; Further, that in the effort to remember, there is a growing Distance from him I've since become, until that figure seems In the past, too, and who exactly is it now who's going Into the future? Less and less am I a fool who deems Himself unfeeling because he distrusts reminiscing. I Am glad to love what I love now, before it turns to dreams.

David Galler