Vocable (for John)

An extract from the poem ‘Vocable’

by Philip Gross 2nd December 2011

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: