[I read a newspaper article about a composer who has written an opera about alzheimer’s dementia. Among other things the composer learned about dementia is that the musical abilities of the patient do not disappear while so much else in the brain is deteriorating.]
here is the sonnet resulting from that reading:
Diminuendo, Dementia
When all the rest is gone, the music does
Not fade. Her daughter might as well be sealed
Up in a graveyad urn. What her son was
Is as feeble as what gray ashes yield
When dribbled onto waves. Her husband? He
Now occupies an infinitely small
Synaptic tangle nobody can free,
A tight Gordian knot including how tall
He was at the altar, how bad he was in bed,
His cock an idol, hurtful as a fire
Or god. All that has vanished from her head,
Less left than after burning of a pyre.
But music she recalls: she plays and sings.
Who knows if it resounds against lost things?