Edwin Honig turns 91

Looking through piles of books for something else, I came up an old copy of Nedge # 4, which includes a poem by Edwin Honig, old friend & teacher (who turns 91 today). I was moved by the way this poem seems to foreshadow Edwin's future (& present) suffering from Alzheimer's. Though Edwin seems to have lost his memory almost entirely, he's retained his old mischievous, playful manner, his sense of humor & surprise...

Here's the poem from Nedge :

Lying on the Half-Truth

No one at the station
meets no one on the train.
Train starts up again,
takes away the station.

Yesterday's
the other-won't-
ever-reappear
place

bursting-brave-
new-opening
into the then-
clear-day

sliding by with
all its own
maybe-now-
when-if-it

chafing thought
squelched by
asking
then-and-there

Did it ever happen?
Was I in it?
How was it to be that
where-and-when now?

*

- I can hear Edwin's bemused, tuneful, comical, wry (what's the word?) human voice in my head, reciting this.... & somewhere I have an old recording of one of his readings... I should try to get it digitized - maybe I will.