Lapsing into oblivion

Found this quote in an essay, The Conspiracy of Silence, by the poet Charles Simic in the book, Memory Piano.

 "How everything is constantly lapsing into oblivion with every extinguished life, how the world is, as it were, draining itself, in that the history of countless places and objects which themselves have no power of memory is never heard, never described, or passed on." - W. G. Sebald (Austerlitz)

Or as the poet, Donald Justice, so eloquently put it in his poem, Bus Stop:

And lives go on   

Like sudden lights   

At street corners

Or like the lights   

In quiet rooms

Left on for hours,   

Burning, burning.

And so it goes.