ekleksographia wave two

In Another Language

The poem I'll read for you
is in a language not our own,
you will hear and be lost
in an alien land not unlike love itself
where those we ask for directions
can only shrug and point to town.
There is nothing to know or follow,
though when I mouth these words
you may be moved no less for lack of meaning,
something about a river, the shadow
of a sparrow upon the wind, or fish
just under the surface. Don't try
to understand any more than you would ponder
a bowl of soup, for it doesn't matter
if these are words of a recipe or a psalm.
The tongues cut from an old pair of shoes,
a shell's ear buried in sand,
all the more beautiful for what's left unsaid
or that we are unable to say aloud
in the vocabulary of lips, grammar
of our arms. A child singing beneath a willow
like rain or words under wings of geese
rising off the lake, hear this
as you would hear water running over stones,
with as few words as you can make out,
like hand, like two, like sleep.

Ekleksographia:
Wave Two

October, 2009

Poems

• In Another Language

James Finnegan

James Finnegan's poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry East, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review & other literary magazines. He founded an internet discussion listserv called the NewPoetry List and he blogs aphorisms and ars poetica at usrprache.