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Poetry

Dictionary

Sometimes—in the middle of fair night—/when disobedient moon turns vandal/and violently rips off the bolts/of my window-shutters, my eyelids…”

variation on a theme of John Barth’s

recommendation for “prescriptive grammar”

as a healer of sorts (The End of the Road)

 

disobey—

disoblige—

Disorder—

 

Sometimes—in the middle of fair night—

when disobedient moon turns vandal

and violently rips off the bolts

of my window-shutters, my eyelids,

forcing them open to cells of unreclaimed

remembrance—memory funeral, tenebrous—

or when the microscopic pea underneath

my forty princely mattresses turns loose,

having to disoblige what little rest

my ailing thoughts laboriously secured

from tight-fisted sleep,

I fear that disorder might creep in

the spacious crevasse of Big Ben’s entrails

to overturn good old punctilious time.

 

In these foreboding nights of chaos pending

I reach for a dictionary, of any kind,

disobey—disoblige—disorder—

and greedily feed on its law,

its system, structure, rhythm.

                        

Of course, I learn nothing of the art

of holding reservations for tempest

in a harmonious, apollonian lodging.

 

Youlika Masry, a dual citizen of Greece and the United States, completed her legal education in Greece and France and also studied political theory in the United States. In addition to publishing poetry, she writes and translates books and essays in literature; the social sciences; religion and theology.

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