Smiling smiling into a dozen youthful <br />afternoons, <br />sunlit once I suppose <br />in gold stained antiquity, <br />floodlit student days, <br />my books and visits to Corfu <br />with you, now I cannot remember <br />the date of your birth, <br />or color of your terracotta pots. <br /> <br />A doctor whispers one word, <br />Alzheimer loud enough <br />for Zeus to hear. <br /> <br />The mind <br />a wasp nest of grapevine <br />and seed. <br /> <br />I struggle to recall subjects <br />of my academic papers, the classic <br />figures of visiting lectures. <br /> <br />Ammonis, Dead at Twenty-Nine, <br />In 610 falls dark. His page near-erased, <br />What next? I lisp speaking Greek <br />if I can speak at all. <br /> <br />Mykonos <br />Patmos <br />Rhodes <br /> <br />Facts drift away forgotten. <br />The mind stirs feebly <br />like shell-shocked <br />patients at sanitorium. <br /> <br />I stammer, claw. <br />Dumb insect <br />crossing the beam <br />of the great Pharos lighthouse, <br />my cargo jettisoned <br />bale by bale, <br />box after <br />box. <br /> <br />Under the Parthenon's <br />darkening columns <br />I brood over Homer's poetry <br />like Ulysses over battle maps.<br /><br />Bernard Henrie<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-am-dying-golden-greece-dying/
