Words
By Grace Paley
What has happened?
language eludes me
the nice specifying
words of my life fail
when I call
Ah says a friend
dried up no doubt
on the desiccated
twigs in the swamp
of the skull like
a lake where the
water level has been
shifted by highways
a couple of miles off
Another friend says
no no my dear perhaps
you are only meant to
speak more plainly
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