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<b>SOURCE:</b> Finkelstein, Caroline. "My Little Esperanto. "
<i>Ploughshares</i>, vo. 22, no. 4 (Winter 1996): 101-2.<br><br>
<br>
<b>My Little Esperanto<br><br>
</b>The
dirt-and-grease-and-brown-rose-rot-Community-Garden-woman-out-of-the-rice-paddy-with-Toltec-baby-on-the-back
<br>
party begins, good morning, like a tiger, a lullaby on the dirge-cusp,
<br>
and is gorgeous, not ever sitting one minute, not a moment insouciant,
<br>
and absolutely lagging badly in the calm department, carrying life around
<br>
in an iron handcart with peony, and a thousand people a second attend,
<br>
drinking elixirs, essence-of-nutrient flavor, no-fat-bubbled-up juices,
<br>
and all the guests as troubled and as lithe as cats <br>
and as lonely as any human dog. And all of them talking <br>
rare-specimen-of-horticulture talk and sparrow gabble. <br>
They have matches in their pockets and two books: Faust, translated <br>
by the neighborhood Buddha, the tricky one, and another I forget. <br>
They talk love language in couplets, in near-tears, in the soft sounds
<br>
called love sounds that I love; beautiful sheets they wear, beautiful
laundry. <br>
There's a child with an old greenish-metal elephant that was a valentine;
<br>
another child has some marbles shiny with goodbye, but no one is thinking
<br>
of going yet; it's only afternoon, maybe it's later but just. <br>
Listen, the last time <br>
you kissed me, yesterday, did you think you had me then? <br>
You had me then. <br>
You had me like this party I'm having, this immaculate tinsel, <br>
this irony, <br>
this Homeric tradition with salt, this disorder, this groveling, <br>
this splaying <br>
and rapture; sweetheart, the silence will be awful when we die <br>
and leave.<br>
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