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.
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