for John Hollander
The language isn't saved by style
but by a tale worth telling.
Not, then, to purify the old words
but to bring new speech into
the lexicon of the tribe,
to tell, for example, how they
received their names-the gods-
who die in every generation
-the world ends-
and are revived under new vocables
as yet unknown to us
and in other, still unguessable shapes
-that must be the world renewed, the new world.
Or even to tell-if we can tell
no more than this-how they came to die
and lost their names and their allure, were husks
hardly able to hold our whispers,
even this allows us a kind
of communion, a beginning of sorts,
a way to keep feeling alive.
FRAGMENT by Irving Feldman | Sandalwood Poetry Reed Diffuser Set
$20.00Price
