More on memories

I found this poem in the New Yorker a few months back, and it made me terribly sad. Not only about what I will leave behind, but who will feel the loss of me. I think this is one of the reasons why humans are compelled to reproduce - to become immortal by memory.

The Resurrection of the Dead

We are buried below with everything we did
with our tears and our laughs
We have made storerooms of history out of it all,
galleries of the past, and treasure houses,
buildings and walls and endless stairs of iron and marble
in the cellars of time.
We will not take anything with us.
Even plundering kings, they all left something here.
Lovers and conquerors, happy and sad,
they all left something here, a sign, a house,
like a man who seeks to return to a beloved place
and purposely forgets a book, a basket, a pair of glasses,
so that he will have an excuse to come back to the beloved place.
In the same way we leave things we here.
In the same way the dead leave us.


by Yehudi Amichai

Translated from the Hebrew by Leon Weiseltier