“We must take the language/by surprise;/seal its every utterance/with a kiss or tear…”
For Apolinar Recendiz
We must take the language
by surprise;
kidnap the sentence boxes
from the sages’ gorge
from learned volumes,
and trust them to the nursery
for tender baby hands
to shake them like a rattle;
hunt for the comatose phrases
at bus stops, elevators, news stands,
and like a sensuous young man
try to catch them from behind;
startle the convoys of syllables benumbed
at dinner conversations, staff meetings,
and tempt them to send out
shooting stars;
then enter the reception hall
like clement basileus
and hang all the words
from chandeliers of crystal
—upside down—
till they spill leaf after leaf
all the disguises of man.
We must take the language
by surprise;
seal its every utterance
with a kiss or tear,
rinse all its phonemes with virgin blood,
and plead with the mighty gods
that they escort the vocables anew,
or just allow a Mexican young girl to
give up her cleaning
for the day
and knead the whole of lexicon
with violet fingers and the breath of song
as she exclaims sadly at the sight
of brand new car with tinted glass:
“un carro triste”…a melancholic car.
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.
