Today in Maine

Today I was supposed to be talking about books and about writing nonfiction at a school in Waterville, Maine. It’s about an hour away from my home in Portland.

I’m not speaking there because–well. You know why I’m not speaking there. I can’t quite bear to articulate why schools across Maine are closed for the second day in a row.

I wish I could say I’m shocked. Astonished. Enraged. I wish I could feel those things. Instead, what fills my mind is mostly a profound, enveloping weariness, and this poem. It’s called “On Getting out of Vietnam.”

Theseus, if he did destroy the Minotaur
(It’s hard to say, that may have been myth),
Was careful not to close the labyrinth.
So After kept on looking like Before:
Back home in Athens still the elders sent
Their quota of kids to Knossos, confident
they would find something to die of, and for.

I learned this by heart when I was a teenager in a summer writing program. Howard Nemerov, the author, was a guest speaker, a visiting writer. Which is what I’m supposed to be today, but I can’t. Because today’s After looks so much like Before.