Because my head hasn't grown
since I stopped growing, and my memories
have piled up inside me,
I have to assume they're now in my belly
and my thighs, and legs. A sort of walking archive, an orderly
disorder, a sagging warehouse, an over-
loaded ship.
Sometimes I want to lie down on a park bench:
that would change my status
from Lost Inside to
Lost Outside.
Words have begun to abandon me
as rats abandon a sinking ship.
The last word is the captain.
~ from The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai (HarpurPerrenial 1992)
