Author Information
At The Marketplace In Athens
[after Acts 18:15-18]
Tell me: just what can this itinerant
sophist (and, if I heard you right, a Jew)
teach me about the world? What could I want
from him? What could this man possibly do
about this greatest sorrow of my life---
the cause of this debilitating grief?
This morning I have buried my sweet wife.
She has been taken---wrenched---away from me
thought I was taught to think that common death,
is just the nothing after our last breath.
But what about those who are left behind?
For them, what have wise dialogues designed?
Her gentle humor and her smile exist
no more. Our love is gone. Her corpse, just matter,
will rot and its constituent atoms scatter.
I will not be embraced by her, or kissed,
again, nor under midnight's stars caressed.
Damn Epicurus: his philosophy
did not prepare me well to lose the best
part of my whole existence. Mankind's fears
might be abolished some day, but the tears
are present---future---unrelenting---real.
Dead Epicurus: did he never feel
how love's absence becomes the greatest loss?
What metaphor is equal to such bleak
prospects?---a slave, dying upon a cross
without the hope of even slight relief?
My sorrow is as much excruciating,
more even than an orator's relating.
As you wish, I shall go with you today
to hear what this babbler might have to say.
I really doubt, however, he will speak
the kind of words of comfort that I seek.
Starward
[jlc]
