The Mutes

Those groans men usepassing a woman on the streetor on the steps of the subway

to tell her she is a femaleand their flesh knows it,

are they a sort of tune,an ugly enough song, sungby a bird with a slit tongue

but meant for music?

Or are they the muffled roaringof deafmutes trapped in a building that isslowly filling with smoke?

Perhaps both.

Such men most oftenlook as if groan were all they could do,yet a woman, in spite of herself,

knows it’s a tribute:if she were lacking all gracethey’d pass her in silence:

so it’s not only to say she’sa warm hole. It’s a word

in grief-language, nothing to do withprimitive, not an ur-language;language stricken, sickened, cast down

in decrepitude. She wants tothrow the tribute away, dis-gusted, and can’t,

it goes on buzzing in her ear,it changes the pace of her walk,the torn posters in echoing corridors

spell it out, itquakes and gnashes as the train comes in.Her pulse sullenly

had picked up speed,but the cars slow down andjar to a stop while her understanding

keeps on translating:‘Life after life after life goes by

without poetry,without seemliness,without love.’

Ur-language: A.k.a. Proto-world language (a theoretical ancestor that would be common to all modern languages)