From the very beginning of The Rearrangement the reader is involved in themes which will play repeatedly through the poems: learning, knowledge and memory, and the way in which these work to satisfy, or frustrate, a metaphysical sense of order, even truth. There is a great fight against forgetfulness:

Trying to recall so much
            and so much more beyond recalling
If you do all this
            and still count yourself a survivor
            and expose your eye to the swivelling
                      moon
            and smile
            and swing your face into the clock be
                      hind you
            always behind you
If you do all this
            you will have conquered the invisible
                      again

            (from the opening poem ‘A Concise History of the Moon’)