I'm sorry to be so melancholy but maybe it's my truth.
This one has to do with the subject of linguistics.
And it's addressed to Dave Anton who has
been majoring in linguistics.
And I think it's not directly on the subject but really
an attitude towards Dave Anton's sense of what
the linguistics is all about.
I heard a man talking without a tongue,
he grunted grammatically.
It was easy to grasp that he wanted a tongue
and was saying he missed it.
I was quite moved and I was delighted he could signal.
But who could help?
What could be done except to teach him to write and make
that his subject, which then could
lead to other thoughts in his pleasure?
We'd embrace him, knowing that among us were missing legs,
arms, heads, and penises that we too can't talk about endlessly
without finding ourselves alone and in trouble.
I have quite a few in this book on the subject
and we'll select a number of them as I go along,
beginning with the later ones.