Vijay Seshadri, "Memoir"

If you've ever spent a restless night cringing at mistakes long past, if you know the sudden twist in your gut as you remember that thing you said that one time that came out totally wrong...this poem is for you. Seshadri had me at the second line, because in some ways I really do believe that "the real story of a life is the story of its humiliations." And unlike his own reaction, it makes me want to tell that story constantly, as if by acknowledging shame I can lessen it, as though saying, "see how I was a fool, a buffoon, an idiot" diffuses the thoughtlessness of the past somehow, assures people that I am older, wiser, smarter, more self-assured.

Which is, of course, only partly true. From the Feb, 28, 2005 New Yorker.

Memoir

Orwell says somewhere that no one ever writes the real story of their life.
The real story of a life is the story of its humiliations.
If I wrote that story now —
radioactive to the end of time —
people, I swear, your eyes would fall out, you couldn't peel
the gloves fast enough
from your hands scorched by the firestorms of that shame.
Your poor hands. Your poor eyes
to see me weeping in my room
or boring the tall blonde to death.
Once I accused the innocent.
Once I bowed and prayed to the guilty.
I still wince at what I once said to the devastated widow.
And one October afternoon, under a locust tree
whose blackened pods were falling and making
illuminating patterns on the pathway,
I was seized by joy,
and someone saw me there,
and that was the worst of all,
lacerating and unforgettable.

       &mdash Vijay Seshadri