Malinowski

A name remembered or unremembered through student halls,
it may be that his portrait still hangs in some collegiate junction.
Somewhere, his voice remains, perhaps behind book-littered walls,
muttering the complicated elements of origins and functions.

I read him now, as though I would read the accounts of some explorer,
Remembering his life because it will show up on an exam.
Because the times demand it, I shall forget it all tomorrow,
Like the scholar’s footprints on Polynesian sand.

He’s gone. Used up, his esophagus closed some time ago.
I look at the sunset — part of him remains in the book between my hands.
Who else would hold it? The sunset makes me wonder, though:
is his savage-sounding name still remembered in far-off Trobriand?