I tried out every trick I knew to help him, white-hair haloed
Gentleman who spoke elegantly in the classics I couldn't read.
I could hear in the very gentleness of his dwindling garden of words
What was extinguishing the fading remainder of him. Mnemosyne.
So like her to whisper intimately in the poet's ear, I'm leaving.
He stood and swayed among the invasive trees, smiling faintly.
I tried. I said what I could: Greetings, you who suffered the painful thing;
You have never endured this before. I cannot say I have either.
I would speak to you in perfect hexameters,
But I have to tell you, Orpheus can't help us.
See that cottonwood beside the white rock down in the meadow?
Don't linger there. You'll forget everything then, and be like all the rest
Of the universes that flowered, considered themselves, and left.
Go the other way. Tell the guardians you're thirsty, a child of the night,
The gods, the stars. All you have to do, Merwin, is remember this.
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