there is no forgetting
If you should ask me where I've been all this time
I have to say 'Things happen.'
I have to dwell on stones darkening the earth,
on the river ruined in its own duration:
I know nothing save things the birds have lost,
the sea I left behind, or my sister crying.
Why this abundance of places? Why does day lock
with day? Why the dark night swilling round
in our mouths? And why the dead?
Should you ask me where I come from, I must talk
with broken things,
with fairly painful utensils,
with great beasts turned to dust as often as not
and my afflicted heart.
These are not memories that have passed each other
nor the yellowing pigeon asleep in our forgetting;
these are tearful faces
and fingers down our throats
and whatever among leaves falls to the ground:
the dark of a day gone by
grown fat on our grieving blood.
Here are violets, and here swallows,
all things we love and which inform
sweet messages seriatim
through which time passes and sweetness passes.
We don't get far, though, beyond these teeth:
Why waste time gnawing the husks of silence?
I know not what to answer:
there are so many dead,
and so many dikes the red sun breached,
and so many heads battering hulls
and so many hands that have closed over kisses
and so many things that I want to forget.
Pablo Neruda
Carl Mydans - Little girl sitting on a giraffe, the only animal that doesn’t go up and down on the merry-go-round in the Tivoli amusement park. Denmark. July 1952
Alfred Eisenstaedt - Low angle of cadets at naval academy lining stairway in Maury Hall. Annapolis, MD, US 1937
W. Eugene Smith - A nurse holding a floral tribute stands at the grave of an elderly woman who died after a long stay at Dr. Albert Schweitzer’s hospital village. Lambarene, Gabon 1954
Nina Leen - The local movie theater, boys have a very difficult time finding a place to put their long legs. Des Moines, June 1945
Herbert Gehr - Movie crowd pouring into the main entrance of the palatial Roxy Theater in the Times Square area, New York, May 1943
Nina Leen - Balloon Toys
Loomis Dean - Albert Camus, kissing actress Dominique Blanchar after rehearsal of one of his plays. Paris,1957
Marie Hansen - Woman holding a large white rabbit at a rabbit show. New York 1943
Walter Sanders - American GI leading German boys on tour of city as part of a Boys Club outing.Bremen, Germany, November 1946
W. Eugene Smith - Blood sample being taken from a monkey raised in germ free environment at Notre Dame’s Laboratory of Bacteriology to find out how it differs in immunity from other animals, 1949
J. R. Eyerman - Expanding balloon illustrates in two dimensions the theory of the expanding universe, Los Angeles, July 1950
Bob Landry - An Army sergeant visiting home on leave reading a book with his son, the family gathered around them, Stockport, United Kingdom, October 1945
Loomis Dean - Louvre At Night (Art-Sculptures), 1958
Nina Leen - Teenage twins discussing allowance, St Louis, April 1957
