Old Hallways

Architecture’s a fun stand-in
For memory, if you grew up
In a part of the world possessed
By large, many-chambered buildings.

Likely, memory palaces
Never entered conversations
In cultures without palaces
Or castles, prisons, towers of flats.

It’s easy to imagine mind
As having attics and hallways
That extend back into darkness
Or lead to forbidden chambers—

Come to think of it, palaces
Notwithstanding, architecture
As metaphor for memory
Tends to the gloomy and gothic—

Memory, after all, goes dark
Or becomes increasingly blurred
And spooky, the more it’s explored.
If you were to make up your own

Metaphor, the architecture
Would combine deceit and ruin,
With a false front or grand facade
For forward-facing memories

While progressive desuetude
Ruled the deeper interiors
Until they opened up again
To roofless, cracked walls on nothing.

Back there, where the weather’s never
The same as outside the front door,
Various shadowy figures squat
In night or hazy morning light,

Living rent-free as animals
And chimeras who wouldn’t know
A splendid memory palace
From a toothless hole in the wall.