Vocable (for John)
An extract from the poem ‘Vocable’
Ninety now, you’re adrift on the vowel-stream,
the crisp edge of all your five languages gone
and we’re back to the least of language. It’s all one,
your, his or my slight modulations of the bare
vowel of animal need… though even there
how they give us away, our vowel sounds:
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