“Recuerdo” is the Spanish word for “memory”. One of the great luxuries of the passage of time is the accumulation of memories which acquire an added romance as the years shape them and redeem them from the workaday present into the shimmering past.

The text is read by Peter Yearsley on a librivox.org public domain recording, and is Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem “Recuerdo”.

The music was created by sampling the “ooo” chorus of Calendar Girl’s “March”, and using it as the basis for this melody.

The poem was published in 1922, when Millay was 31.

The poem is as follows:

Recuerdo

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.