Finally, we have said enough-
Time has come and told us:
I cut off your tongues.
This is the century you will
die in, Time says...
Your endless, wheedling words
will congeal around your mouths
like age-coloured blood;
even when you merely think of
speaking
you will feel the sinews, the
elastic threads
that meld with your own spit
and image
pulling on the insubstantial
joins of lip and lip.
Time says: This is the century
you will die in.
Hurry. I cut off your tongues.
Time says:
Hurry away from your home at
midnight
dragging a long, bleached
shroud, and never turn back to see
that inside homely light
grieving and sulking;
climb to the top of the
closest hill and run with your arms pinned out
until you are flying over the
hot yellow lamps of the town below;
collapse under the open
whistling sky with the morning licking your face
like thirsty translucent
lizards;
in the morning, go down to the
sea and purify yourself in
the calloused suck and assault
of the whipping waves
with your hair full of crunch
and thorn and twist;
cover your breakfast wine with
bruised violets;
dunk your bread in levity;
change your middle name to
that of an unclimbable mountain
and don't tell anyone,
yet;
plant enough speckled scarlet
beans to last a year;
smoke a musky pipeful of
willowbark, just once,
to know what sweetness is;
ponder on a bottle of virgin
olive oil
with the last bittergreen rays
of the sun spreading behind it;
be glad when you say I am
and learn to give away your
last big tongue-twizzling penny.
When all these things are
done-
be honest for once with your
children;
turn three times and say:
Mourning Cloak Butterfly
and the first person you see
will be
the one you knew was coming,
all along.
You may now speak your middle
name.
But remember...This is the century
you will die in.
Kiss deep your new love, but
beware...he may bite off your tongue.
