I guess all the coincidences of the day had something to do with today's mid-soak epiphany that the Tamil endearments "thane-y" and "maane-y" translate handily to "honey" and... "deer" (not "dear").
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A Sonnet on Coming Halfway Across the World
For we are everywhere a palimpsest of us
and the karma and the kismet of meeting
is multiplied by the distance of continents
fussy with farness, a dance of catastrophe.
What if we should fail at loving each other;
what if language cleaves us with difference?
It was in childhood I first heard of love--
on the radio, songs speaking endearments
in Tamizh, singing O thaneY, O maaneY...
these cupped invitations that connect us:
thaneY is... honey; maaneY is... deer, but
still homonym enough to arc from error
to hope--like words I carry as souvenirs--
we two/too are alike, steadfast, and dear.
5 comments:
Beautiful sonnet, it's very touching.
I love a good palindrome. I had a friend whose birthday was yesterday, which I thought was really fun!
Happy birthday to your lucky friend. (And thank you about the sonnet--I'm still tinkering with it :))
Very nice poem.
I saw someone on the Metro yesterday wearing a tutu and only read in the paper later that some people were wearing tutus in celebrations of twos-day.
Thank you, StephLove. SUCH a cool idea with the tutus! Wish I'd known--not that I'd have worn one, but I'd have looked out for people wearing them.
It took me an embarrassing length of time to figure out why people would be wearing tutus on 2/22/22.
Face palm. Sigh.
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