! A Little Grammar Is Most Becoming, It Becomes A Man... Poem by Michael Shepherd

And in case no-one mentioned this to you
on those hot summer afternoons when
you could hear the sound of bat on ball, or
ball on racquet, or foot on football, or
just people enjoying themselves out there
beyond the half-open classroom window –

a little bit of grammar can open your eyes,
open your mind, make you curious…
take for example the word ‘become’..

many centuries ago the ancient Brits
got it from some ‘Germanic’ tribe,
and it meant, to come to a place,
be somewhere, go somewhere…

and later it acquired the sense of something
developing into something else, and
being recognised as that –
‘she’s become a real beauty, hasn’t she? ’

then in the Jane Austeny 18th century years,
they would say ‘what a very becoming
young lady..’ though not to imply she
wasn’t quite a lady yet, oh no…
and the verb had ‘become’
an adjective sometimes (well, OK, a verbal adjective..)

or they’d say ‘How well those clothes become her! ’
meaning, not, she hung them up at night, and
in the morning found herself hanging there inside them…
but meaning decorous, well turned out…

then in the 19th century I guess,
philosophers of the heavy sort (we might assume
they’d reverted to Germanic tones…)
talked about ‘Being and Becoming’,

implying that two things were going on,
a bit like one thing standing still inside
something else which was changing;
or perhaps outside; a bit like God
(whom those philosophers didn’t necessarily
believe in – but it serves…)

God saying ‘I Am - BUT – I am going
to become – Everything! ! … so,
Let There Be Light! ’ and
you know what – there was light…

and there alas, we must leave
our friend ‘becoming’; to become
what it will, or rather, how we use it; but
you must agree, life becomes more interesting,
even you could say, more becoming,
with a touch of grammar even
on a hot day when you’re becoming
a little drowsy, please Miss, can I go
and get a glass of water…?