I wanted to write something specifically for VN's birthday, but of course
haven't found the time. Instead, I'll offer a poem that isn't about VN, but
steals from John Shade's first line of Canto Three and also nods to the
original title of VN's revised memoir (Speak, Mnemosyne). Perhaps there is
also a shadow of John Shade's lines about passing on his looks to Hazel
("She might have been you, me, or some quaint blend").

Matt Roth

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The Quiet One

To be not small but merely here
as a letter lost in a long word

larded with odd alliances—
where words hide all their silences.

To be the M in Mnemosyne, seen
but not heard, like a rich man's ward,

or the fat forgotten wife
of a long-remembered bard.

Better yet to be the silent e that makes
the small i speak its name and brings

l’if (O yew) to life. That was my way
until one day a child, looking

half like me, traced my form
with his finger, a child’s game,

and guiltless, smiling,
spoke my name.