The Living Language
We wish to hear words ring
and bellow monosyllables, squeak
sentences like day-end spleen of beasts
on city hills, our songs float
in polluting bubbles.
We imagine other wise.
We seem to think we think
some things, that fine words surge
through our hoary longing, that silver-tonged
winds sough through our reeds.
Then what is the yammering clamour
about me, the claw-hammering
of muttered songs, the bleak-bland
whinnying of city voices, the clod
whopping of jaws?
What has happened to Simon’s language?
What has happened to simple song?
What has happened to the Muse within us?
She gone, simply,
simply gone.