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Romany
Do Gentry
The gypsy violinists camped all summer in the meadow.
Now their caravans have disappeared, their silken tents
folded and stowed – umber and lapis and almond-scented geranium.
The weight of skin : the weight of
bone.
A moveable country whose language has no word to call itself.
A new paradigm, someone says
at the next table,
but you’re too busy watching the old man
filching sugar packets and slipping them
into his waistcoat pocket to listen.
What is paradigm anyway :
what is actuarial?
And how many times do you need to look them up?
They join the other words that have spun loose
from the orbits of their meanings, propelled
by the dictionary’s daily shuffle and reshuffle of definitions.
Pages unhinge themselves from the
spines of books
and do exactly what leaves do each autumn
falling
mulching into the topsoil of forgetfulness.
After a storm, the scent of
leaf-mold and almond.
The weight of ash : the weight of your empty hand.
Demographics & statistics & (oh,
yes) questionable prognoses
drift
from the table
to the floor.
For didn’t the fortune teller
advise opening the windows
on the cusp of a storm? Especially while the gypsies are breaking
camp, and the smoke of their fires empties its last breath
into the sky, and the moon crosses the night’s palm
with silver.
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