Vijay Seshadri – Ⅱ

Aphasia 

 

 

 

His signs flick off.

His names of birds

and his beautiful words—

eleemosynary, fir, cinerarium, reckless—

skip like pearls from a snapped necklace

scattering over linoleum.

 

His thinking won’t

venture out of his mouth.

His grammar heads south.

Pathetic his subjunctives; just as pathetic

his mangling the emphatic enclitic

he once was the master of.

 

Still, all in all, he has

his inner weather of pure meaning,

though the wind is keening

through his Alps and his clouds hang low

and the forecast is “Rain mixed with snow,

heavy at times.”