“The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold / And his — his — his —“
Still walking, I looked at my phone and started again, this time even louder.
“The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold / And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold / And the sheen of their spears was like –“
I darted another glance down and tried to keep going.
“Like stars on the sea / When the deep, no, blue, no, wait – argh!” I yelped, in frustration.
Too late, I noticed that a woman was coming toward me along the towpath that runs parallel to the Potomac.
I knew I must have seemed like an Old Testament prophet, what with all the arm waving and the loud voice declaiming poetry. I felt I must reassure this stranger that it was perfectly safe to share the towpath with me, and that although I might seem like a nut I was quite harmless.
So as we approached one another, I arranged my face in a pleasant smile and sought to catch her eye. Probably wisely, she kept her own gaze fixed firmly forward, and passed me without acknowledgement.
Abashed, I waited until she had disappeared around a bend in the river before directing my attention back to my phone, and to the verses of Lord Byron’s “The Destruction of Sennacherib” displayed there.
“Aha!” I said out loud, “It’s When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.”
Repeating the line a few times, to better to cement it into the sandy surface of my memory, I moved to the next verse.
Memorizing poetry is a new thing for me, and, to be honest, I thought I’d left it too long, and was simply too grown up to be able to retain anything more complicated than a limerick.
Certainly I remembered a verse or two from childhood, a state of affairs that only seemed to highlight how much potential memory I’d squandered. If only I’d learned “Hiawatha” in the sixth grade, I’d have it today!
For a poem learned well stays with you for life. It can be unpacked in moments of loneliness or transport; it pleases and consoles; it adds dimension to the experience of looking at paintings and provides ammunition in conversation. Having poetry in your memory is like having a secret bank account that you can draw upon endlessly, whenever you need it, and that no one can confiscate.
Knowing this, I’ve insisted that my children fill up their memories with as much poetry as possible. But until recently, when I began my Old Testament wanderings along the river, I had resigned myself to getting by with the dollar-and-a-half that I had deposited in my poetry account back in elementary school.
What changed, I don’t remember (funny, that) but one day this fall there I was, walking along, when the thought occurred: “Hey, why don’t I try memorizing a poem?”
Read the rest of the piece here:http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/2011/11/if-you-see-woman-declaiming-and-waving-her-arms-she-apt-be-our-poetic-columnist#ixzz1eyOL1j50
