Because they are immortal,
time does not pass for them
the way it does for us. Instead,
it unravels
endlessly.
Therefore, unlike yours,
a god’s life resists
summary.
+
It may be more accurate to say
the ancient Greeks believed in immortal
forces—
the force of sexual desire,
of chastity or war or ocean.
Poseidon, for instance:
+
Why, you might ask,
does he terrorize Odysseus?
Because Odysseus blinded his son,
the Cyclops?
Or because the ocean is in fact
unforgiving
and terrifying.
+
That I love you
is a fact. (Sappho would have said
that Aphrodite set my veins
on fire.) But here you are
in the hospital
and when your heart fibrillates,
the machine beeps
+
incessantly. It’s always
beeping. The nurses,
like the distant gods,
don’t care,
hard at work on word search puzzles
in their brightly lit stations,
+
so I’ve learned not to be alarmed, either.
I just hit the button that says
“reset”
and get back to my book
+
about the Greek gods
and their vast removal from us.
The Christian desire
to whisper into the ear of Jesus
and have him whisper back
makes sense
among the dying,
+
but Greek loneliness
seems closer to explaining
the forces that brought us here
and make me wander
the hospital skybridges
late at night,
watching that same McDonald’s blinking
into darkness.
+
Listen: Once
you were vibrant, you were really
alive. And now you are
intubated. Now you are
nosocomial. But I still love you.
+
Otherwise I wouldn’t be packing up my things
to head home for a few hours’ sleep,
maybe get my gradebook
in order
before driving that same route back here
in the morning,
+
a route that, next year, when
for some reason I happen to take it,
might create
within me
the memory of those long last days
visiting you here.
You lived
a good life.
The gods barely noticed
and were beyond comprehension,
anyway,
useless and immortal.
That we will come to an end
makes this poem
possible.