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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460270" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Parsing of Senility</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460270" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The names go first. That’s not<br>uncommon, and even among those who<br>are younger.. psychologists say<br>(how discomforted this couch, Professor Freud..) <br>it’s sheer selfishness; we don’t want our friends<br>to know our other friends..</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460270" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The names go first. One learns the dodges –<br>‘You’ll all know each other, of course…’; <br>names, they’re nouns; so how far will it go? <br>how well can I live well, when without nouns? </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460270" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Spirit lives in all things; the self exists in all; <br>perhaps I’ll manage with this thought.<br>Then, what will be next to go ? (The nurse sighs<br>as the impatient patient cries, ‘..want..THAT…’) </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460270" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Ah, there’s the clue: pronouns simply stand for names; <br>first person, second, third, will merge<br>into one selfish self – ‘want.. that! .. hungry..! fetch! <br>no.. not that… that… when shall see…? ’<br>I’ll need a patient nurse…</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460270" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So in the this nameless world, where all things are as One, <br>what then, the next to go? <br>Conjunctions would be no great loss –<br>no ifs or buts, as Nanny said, when an all too similar<br>frowning plaintive child tried bargaining…<br>re-punctuation, editing, those shorter sentences<br>which editors would beg of me – yes, <br>‘conjunctivitis’ was my writing’s curse…</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460270" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Prepositions have had a chequered history<br>in languages: sometimes on the end of words, <br>sometimes going before them with a flag; <br>immigrants were never very strong on them; <br>I’ll pretend I’m fresh from Ellis Island…</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460270" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And Mediterranean and Near Eastern hands<br>could learn to play their part; who would spot<br>if adverbs, or those adjectives so dear to poetry<br>turned into grand, expansive gesture? ‘Such<br>an effusive man..’ they’d say.. maybe I’d turn<br>into an opera star; the words a little blurred…</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460270" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And like the poet Elisabeth Bishop, I’d have to learn<br>how to surrender things, with joy… and read, maybe, <br>with ecstasy, every printed word as new, unspoken, magical…</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460270" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">…And the last age, lean and slippered in<br>those hospital pyjamas and blankets with that rough kiss<br>that Rupert spoke about; ruthless, toothless age, <br>sans words, sans lips, sans native tongue, sans…<br>..now, what was that word … Oh, Nurse! Nurse! …<br>oh damn, damn, damn.. oh yippee! .. can still curse…</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Michael+Shepherd">Michael Shepherd</a></strong></div>