[Membroj] My Little Esperanto (poem)

[Ralph Dumain]

SOURCE: Finkelstein, Caroline. "My Little Esperanto. " 
Ploughshares,  vo. 22, no. 4 (Winter 1996): 101-2.


               My Little Esperanto

The 
dirt-and-grease-and-brown-rose-rot-Community-Garden-woman-out-of-the-rice-paddy-with-Toltec-baby-on-the-back 

party begins, good morning, like a tiger, a lullaby on the dirge-cusp,
and is gorgeous, not ever sitting one minute, not a moment insouciant,
and absolutely lagging badly in the calm department, carrying life around
in an iron handcart with peony, and a thousand people a second attend,
drinking elixirs, essence-of-nutrient flavor, no-fat-bubbled-up juices,
and all the guests as troubled and as lithe as cats
and as lonely as any human dog. And all of them talking
rare-specimen-of-horticulture talk and sparrow gabble.
They have matches in their pockets and two books: Faust, translated
by the neighborhood Buddha, the tricky one, and another I forget.
They talk love language in couplets, in near-tears, in the soft sounds
called love sounds that I love; beautiful sheets they wear, beautiful laundry.
There's a child with an old greenish-metal elephant that was a valentine;
another child has some marbles shiny with goodbye, but no one is thinking
of going yet; it's only afternoon, maybe it's later but just.
Listen, the last time
you kissed me, yesterday, did you think you had me then?
You had me then.
You had me like this party I'm having, this immaculate tinsel,
this irony,
this Homeric tradition with salt, this disorder, this groveling,
this splaying
and rapture; sweetheart, the silence will be awful when we die
and leave.
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