2.15.2012

Poem : In Love, His Grammar Grew


I stumbled across this yesterday. Isn't it fantastic? 

In Love, His Grammar Grew
BY STEPHEN DUNN

In love, his grammar grew

rich with intensifiers, and adverbs fell
madly from the sky like pheasants
for the peasantry, and he, as sated
as they were, lolled under shade trees
until roused by moonlight
and the beautiful fraternal twins
and and but. Oh that was when
he knew he couldn’t resist
a conjunction of any kind.
One said accumulate, the other
was a doubter who loved the wind
and the mind that cleans up after it.
                                           For love
he wanted to break all the rules,
light a candle behind a sentence
named Sheila, always running on
and wishing to be stopped
by the hard button of a period.
Sometimes, in desperation, he’d look
toward a mannequin or a window dresser
with a penchant for parsing.
But mostly he wanted you, Sheila,
and the adjectives that could precede
and change you: bluesy, fly-by-night,
queen of all that is and might be.

6 comments:

Joe Bunting said...

Love this, "For love

he wanted to break all the rules,

light a candle behind a sentence

named Sheila..."

It speaks to my condition.

Bethany Suckrow said...

Yes! And I love the line that follows it, 

"always running onand wishing to be stoppedby the hard button of a period."

Joe Bunting said...

Yep. It's brilliant. Thanks for sharing this with me, Bethany :)

sam said...

I adore this: "but mostly he wanted you and the adjectives that could precede and change you: bluesy, fly-by-night, queen of all that is and might be"

sort of hate the name Sheila though (yikes)

Shelley Lundquist said...

Fabulous!

Bethany Suckrow said...

I totally agree about the name Sheila, Sam! But that last line is lovely.

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