And none will hear the postman’s knock Without a quickening of the heart. For who can bear to feel himself forgotten? - W. H. Auden

For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.

In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster, the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green water,
And the expensive ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.