Language In The Twilight Of The State

by Svetlana Gagarin


Oppression is normally shapeless, we are told,
Streaming through vacuum imperceptibly
With an almost sexual vigor, nor does one
See angles, edges, brinks, along a star
(Although its wings are not, entirely, colorless);
Yet both concealments disclose brazen wheels:
Here in the motherland, there, with sword-arm free
Where ravenous tsunamis rape and shriek
And waste with burning, every bone is grave,
Whatever simulacra stains the dew.

But titanic shadows faltering in the hills
And in the American morning have another
Message: it is not slow nor horizontal,
Nor swift nor steep, nor is it glaringly
Thrust forward while all others substitute
Phalli unspeakable, nor is its triumph
Inevitably yellow. It asks rather:
By what enshrouded gate has language departed?
For parallelograms of ESP
Fix in time the wing-swirled Gothic keeps
Where clarity is hopelessly obscure,
However pellucid the sheer coquetry
Of the Orwellian.
(For if the metropolis grows absolute --
You have your Russian Dictaphone, correct?)

My friend, the world is neither oblique nor terrible:
And a good conscience is an attainable feat.
They also serve who neither stand nor wait.