THE DREAM OF LANGUAGE Comments

You'll write about the subjection of animals.
But not today. Remember how the panther
still moves in the literature-free cage

it inherited. You'll remember. But not today.
Because today's the day when metaphors
awaken, the chest opens up, and language

resembles an invention in progress.
A vigil of metaphors filling up the night,
as if it and its mantle and its symbols

were covered by an eternal Saint Elmo's fire.
Today's the day when night becomes day,
when language celebrates animals

after the animals have perished
but with no trace of them surviving
in memory or in longing. Just language,

just meaning and sound echoing inside
meaning, with no possibility of a beginning
asserting itself, no possibility of an end.

You too will have to wake up
to the vigil of metaphors,
to the dream of language.
...
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