In Her Stories I'm Always Younger

We tend to think of our memory as something that leaves us, which is why the beginning of this Szymborska poem is so striking:

I’m a poor audience for my memory.
She wants me to attend her voice nonstop,
but I fidget, fuss,
listen and don’t,
step out, come back, then leave again.

I've been spending a great deal of time with people who are extremely pious, which is why a later stanza jumped out at me:

She wants me to live only for her and with her.
Ideally in a dark, locked room,
but my plans still feature today’s sun,
clouds in progress, ongoing roads.

Szymborska's speaking, of course, to something different than faith or belief -- she's speaking about a particular relationship to memory -- but there's something I really like about the incompleteness of the world in which she lives: "today's sun/ clouds in progress, ongoing roads." Her poem is a reminder both of the ways in which the past inhabits us and of the need to face forward, towards the incomplete world around us.

"Hard Life with Memory" (found on The New York Review of Books) reads in full:

I’m a poor audience for my memory.
She wants me to attend her voice nonstop,
but I fidget, fuss,
listen and don’t,
step out, come back, then leave again.

She wants all my time and attention.
She’s got no problem when I sleep.
The day’s a different matter, which upsets her.

She thrusts old letters, snapshots at me eagerly,
stirs up events both important and un-,
turns my eyes to overlooked views,
peoples them with my dead.

In her stories I’m always younger.
Which is nice, but why always the same story.
Every mirror holds different news for me.

She gets angry when I shrug my shoulders.
And takes revenge by hauling out old errors,
weighty, but easily forgotten.
Looks into my eyes, checks my reaction.
Then comforts me, it could be worse.

She wants me to live only for her and with her.
Ideally in a dark, locked room,
but my plans still feature today’s sun,
clouds in progress, ongoing roads.

At times I get fed up with her.
I suggest a separation. From now to eternity.
Then she smiles at me with pity,
since she knows it would be the end of me too.