The man’s grandfather died
in 1918 of the pandemic
known as the Spanish Flu.
Today, he read a poem
by a French poet
who, also, died of
the very same pandemic.
It was a beautiful poem
with a haunting refrain:
The night is a clock chiming
The days go by not I.
Many, many days have gone
by since the man’s grand-
father died so young — died
long before the man was born.
How much the man would
love to have heard just a word.
It would have been poetry
that he heard — from the lips
of the grandfather he never
knew.