Some languages are fluently translatable
but only by how the mouth
utters and shapes them,
they are too musical to be not sung,
like Gaelic; it was my mother’s tongue
and her grandmother’s elder tongue.
Romani is acoustically spell-binding,
Grandfather was a gypsy
horses naturally understood his voice;
it’s an Indo-Aryan root language
like Yiddish, a colloquial melodia
in Ashkenazi/Aramaic.
My own genetically challenged branch
of a familial tree of tongues
is half-Jewish – the wrong half.
These lips follow only English,
a language with too many roots,
its tongues are all blended into
a raucous silence.
There are many multilingual wounds
and they all bleed like dark treacle
out of a hide-bound dictionary.
A display of giant eyes
But rarely morning flights tries;
Unwanted publicity her grounds,
All CCTV out of bounds!
With ears for the faintest cough,
Their sound-grabbing devices tough,
Also for the aerial steps of wizards
And the dins of far-off blizzards.
Always privy to a discussed murder,
Aware of chose who‘d dared to go further;
None therefore to presume her an idler
Nor for that matter mere Nocturnal flyer;
Such to qualify her for claimed damages…
She really has been frustrating savages,
On roof tops leaking that a family needs
To steer clear of what Omen breeds.
Nicely keeping us out of harm’s way
And specifically from emergency sick bay
From Night Prowlers we never thought exist
And from diseases we aren’t sure we can resist.
The owl knows about a maturing home call,
About every ghastly accidental fall;
The septic syringes we do not deserve
And a misspending of our millions on reserve.
The owl with her translatable hoots
Ahead goes to unearth their roots.
...And then they speak of un-translatable conquests,
Though my face looks so much like your face
And our voices can get caught and surprised in mutual, glancing harmony
Over and over and then something else always occurs.
That altering conquest
Where the thing called "love" is pushed aside
For a shinier jewel,
Where your face is definitively strange
And you become the "other,"
And our union waits for the reunion;
And they keep speaking of it in warping language,
Salted from life's breathe,
Because we all learn as we go,
Finally finding that all rivers flow to the sea,
All conquests being the one multitudinous leap
Into that tongueless all-glowing haze
Where love bleeds into mouths.
Skinless and earthless we receive and
Exhale ancient space.
The space of permanent peace.