I Am Dying, Golden Greece, Dying Poem by Bernard Henrie

Smiling smiling into a dozen youthful
afternoons,
sunlit once I suppose
in gold stained antiquity,
floodlit student days,
my books and visits to Corfu
with you, now I cannot remember
the date of your birth,
or color of your terracotta pots.

A doctor whispers one word,
Alzheimer loud enough
for Zeus to hear.

The mind
a wasp nest of grapevine
and seed.

I struggle to recall subjects
of my academic papers, the classic
figures of visiting lectures.

Ammonis, Dead at Twenty-Nine,
In 610 falls dark. His page near-erased,
What next? I lisp speaking Greek
if I can speak at all.

Mykonos
Patmos
Rhodes

Facts drift away forgotten.
The mind stirs feebly
like shell-shocked
patients at sanitorium.

I stammer, claw.
Dumb insect
crossing the beam
of the great Pharos lighthouse,
my cargo jettisoned
bale by bale,
box after
box.

Under the Parthenon's
darkening columns
I brood over Homer's poetry
like Ulysses over battle maps.