All That I Remember
Clark Ashton SmithAll that I remember From a dim and verdant spring Long dead Is, that one bright mouche of red Patched a blackbird’s wing.
Notes
A memory poem stripped to almost nothing. A whole season — verdant, full of life — and what survives of it? One tiny red spot on a wing. Not the warmth, not the green, not whatever else happened. Just that. Completely arbitrary. Completely specific. This is how memory actually works. Mouche is French for fly, but also the word for the decorative beauty spots fashionable people once wore — so the blackbird is wearing a tiny ornament it doesn’t know it has.