My mother asleep

remembering my mother
at a theatre in Athens

thirty

thirty-five years ago

a revue by Theodorakis
those great songs
she fell asleep
in the chair beside mine

in the open-air theatre
she had arrived that day

from Montreal

and the play started 
close to midnight

and she slept through
the mandolins

the climbing harmonies

and the great songs
I was young

I hadn’t had my children
I didn’t know how far away

your love could be
I didn’t know how

tired you could get 

[Leonard Cohen]