Down in the bottom of my childhood my father stands laughing.

Childhood is long and narrow like a coffin, and you can't get out of it on your own.

Down in the bottom of my childhood my father stands laughing.

my childhood grew thin and flat, paperlike. It was tired and threadbare, and in low moments it didn't look like it would last until I was grown up.

I fear / the place I have / in the memory of others. / They remind me of things / I myself have forgot.

my poems covered the bare places in my childhood like the fine, new skin under a scab that hasn't yet fallen off completely.

Memory, that library of the soul from which I will draw knowledge and experience for the rest of my life.