Poem for Haruko

Record-keeping in general does not lend itself to romance, so it is an unusual choice of language with which to begin a love poem. One might keep a memento of a beloved—maybe even snatch a small something when they aren’t looking—but to keep a record implies a drier, far less passionate action. It’s easy to picture a bookkeeping ledger, with line items carefully delineated in their appropriate columns. In “Poem for Haruko,” the first line says, “I never thought I’d keep a record of my pain” (Line 1). Happiness doesn’t appear until the second line. It is the inclusion of pain that makes this record something other than mere inventory. “To have a record” is to be identified—in some circled, defined—by one’s crimes. It is better, in this sense, to have no record at all.

To keep a record implies an attention to the facts and a desire to go over them again at some point, perhaps to prove a point. Another reason to keep a record is to shore up memory. With documentation, that which wants to fade may be re-inked in the brain.

As the tone of “Poem for Haruko” is one of melancholy and perhaps regret, the record-keeping the speaker at first dismissed and now practices becomes something viscerally emotional.