What is grammar? [blank verse]
you know more than you claim
(or than you'd wish to know?)
for grammar is the dress
pure utterance wears on visits
a ghostly thing without it
we'd have no way to see it
when it folds its arms the dress-arms
become folded exactly so!
it twirls & the dress is caught
in the spectacle of a twirl!
it's a gate allowing water
to reach our mental world
from behind the obdurate dam --
the mighty dam of the unspoken
O how it flows into the air of
our speaking & our listening!
responsive to Christina Hymes' poem,
I know nothing about grammar and grammar knows nothing about me
posted by david raphael israel at 9:46 PM
3 Comments:
Great poem!
"What is Grammar?" makes me recall the Magritte painting of clothes and shoes in the wardrobe, only your wordsketch is fresh, alive and illumined; of the soul needing to be embodied even to be....except that you may reserve that for meaning perhaps.
Liked "most poems" very much too!
Fingertree -- I'll have to track down the painting you mention. Magritte is a painter I like a lot, but I don't recall that one. Thanks for the tip.
Note: I also did an additional riff on the "What is grammar?" question.
cheers,
d.i.
Saw the additional riff,but while that attends to some terribly important things,this here, still has my vote!
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