Meditation at Eighty
- Meditation at Eighty
But why then, Ligurinus, whydoes the occasional tear flow down my cheek?
Horace, Odes, IV:1
At times of change or trouble I dream the rearrangementof public spaces. I'm headed alone through the hospitalwhere I worked, or Central Park, or the Back Bay in Boston.I knew these well, but a random vastness has overtaken them,new halls have arisen among the old, statues in niches,
polished marble floors. No one sought my counsel for all thisand it aches to walk. I ask directions but no one attends.This place I lived and worked in has no love for me.I'm Tantalus or Sisyphus. I'm Gilgamesh, I've lost Enkiduand I weep.
Once I met David Ferry who translated Horace. My namewould have meant nothing to him. Instead I said, Sed cur heu,Ligurine, cur manat rara meas lacrima per genas? and on his agingcheek I saw Horace's tear. "What was your name again," he askedout of courtesy, and we thanked each other for the gift of respite.
I've just spent three days with my older son, tryingto reconcile him with his brother.To what purpose this brutal century? The dancers are all goneunder the hill, and the hill remains, and childrenwill do whatever good they remember. [End Page 254]
Steve Nickman's poetry has appeared in such venues as Mid-American Review, RHINO, and Antigonish Review, and has been a guest speaker on NPR. He lives in the greater Boston area where he works as a psychiatrist, specializing in the dilemmas of adopted children and teens.
