Aphasia

Aphasia

This is a poem that I found in the April 2004 edition of the New Yorker. I think it is really lovely. I am overjoyed to have found it; It is precisely the kind of poem that I love to read, and long to write. Enjoy.


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."

- Vijay Seshadri


Aphasia - total or partial loss of the ability to use or understand language; usually caused by stroke, brain disease, or injury.

Enclitic - An enclitic is a clitic that is phonologically joined at the end of a preceding word to form a single unit.