AnElephant Never um er thingy what is it?

Who What Why When Where by Phil Burns

AnElephantCant dispute there’s a proverb
Which he discusses with some rueful regrets
These supposedly wise words
To him are a curse
They say that AnElephant never forgets

But he has the recollection capability of a chicken
Or a goldfish swimming round and round in a wee glass bowl
At one time his memory
Is nothing short of exemplary
But the passing centuries sadly take their inevitable toll

He now remembers several different kinds of forgetfulness
He allocates each one its own distinct category
He realises with a frown
That he must write them down
If they slip his mind this rhyme is an even sadder story

First of all there are those incidents from his childhood
Passing time opens cracks that these old thoughts slip through
Like which seat he sat in
When he studied Latin
And that rock band who sang Yeah Yeah Yeah She Loves You

Then there’s all the stuff that he knows that he knows recently
But these facts hide somewhere that he can no longer find
He wonders if maybe
They are behind the settee
Or perhaps they just leap out of the windows of his mind

And then of course there’s the details he still does know
But somehow they loiter in a quite inaccessible place
They are on the tip of his tongue
But he is no longer young
All he recalls clearly nowadays is the sad goodbye look on her lovely face