Alexander in New York, 1979

The professor of history, prematurely frail, Chain-smoked while walking in a halting circuit Around the room, her cane beating out ahead As she rhapsodized about her favorite period, The Hellenistic, for in it, she declared, we saw The lineaments of our own age. Young, naïve, We thought she meant Macedonians in Asia Minor Had been young, naïve. Take Alexander, she said. Alexander burned with a flame sparked by whom? The answer was Aristotle who, we soon discovered, Had once been Plato’s pupil. We too were pupils. Whom would we spark? This was lost in her story Of Alexander’s skeleton becoming a bathetic source Of infighting after the boy-general’s death. At that She stopped, tapping ferrule against a withered leg. But what caused Ptolemy to squabble over bones? We did not know. Perhaps an obscure funerary rite, Offered a hesitant soul. Not so! Supernaturalism: He who held those bones held power of the mortal coil. Symbolic transference right out of The Golden Bough. We nodded. Outside, the city rose mild and beautiful. Spring had come early. We were young and brilliant; The plot of our lives most likely held untold glories. Our beauty would never end in a scuffle over bones. On our adamantine towers suns would ever rise and set.