Love, loss and grammar<\/p>\n
[Golden shovel from “I owe a\u00a0longer allegiance to the dead than to the living: in that world I shall\u00a0abide for ever” Sophocles]<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Not \u201chi it\u2019s me\u201d but \u201cthis is she,\u201d as I<\/p>\n
Was told by my mother to whom I owe<\/p>\n
My uptown grammar, my pedantic brio, a<\/p>\n
Punctiliousness in speech that, the longer<\/p>\n
I stay around, the lamer it grows. I pledge allegiance<\/p>\n
To sounding smart, to showing you I know to<\/p>\n
To make a subjunctive case when needed, peppered with the<\/p>\n
Interjections of a foul-mouthed sailor, or really of my dead<\/p>\n
Father who cared less for grammar than<\/p>\n
For words, bad words and funny words in funny voices to<\/p>\n
Make us laugh. Malarkey!, he\u2019d say, and o the<\/p>\n
Delight. How words breed life, repeat first loves, fill the living:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hi, it\u2019s me. In each word my connections, every one, in<\/p>\n
The history of its use before it was mine and that<\/p>\n
Tale of what it\u2019s brought to our Wednesday world<\/p>\n
You will never know my malarkey and I<\/p>\n
Won\u2019t fathom yours, but tonight we shall<\/p>\n
Put away dictionaries and tell the stories and abide<\/p>\n
In translation for ever<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Love, loss and grammar [Golden shovel from “I owe a\u00a0longer allegiance to the dead than to the living: in that world I shall\u00a0abide for ever” Sophocles] Not \u201chi it\u2019s me\u201d but \u201cthis is she,\u201d as I Was told by my mother to whom I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1037,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1037"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38011,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37949\/revisions\/38011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}