Ruta graveolens, rue, herb-of-grace . . .
“A poet can be intelligent . . . yet he walks, half-balmy and over-armored . . . by his amnesia, ignorance and education.”—Robert Lowell, "Afterthought" in Notebook (3d ed., 1970)
1. Amnesia
Thank God we forget
2. Ignorance
And know so little
3. Education
Though we learned so much.
Lost memories, threatened time,
Rue averts the evil eye
Displacing all along the line,
Savour and seeming, summer's lie,
En route to amnesia's bland sea
And drifts of immemorial snow
Banked up fled centuries ago.
Is this, though, where I wish to be?
Passing through like all of you,
I picked some sonnets for my shield,
Escutcheon of the dearest dead,
Whom best to trust, ancestral true.
When those parting words were said,
Rue, though bitter, they annealed.
Envoi
For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep
Seeming and savour all the winter long.
—Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale, act 4, scene 4
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