Sometimes You Write with Showy Eloquence

Sometimes you write with showy eloquence – or with what

you imagine might be that – as much a fantasy as thinking

you know Latin very well, thank you; or poignantly believing

you’re an upper-middle-class brash Dubliner

who went to Magdalen to become the prima facie literary

heir to Oscar Wilde – another sublimated wild desire,

which you make certain to keep out of view of anyone

who’d know the difference. Hoping for a canny guise

or some syntactical deliverance you use the second person

pronoun you a lot, don’t you. The damnedest, direst, maybe

most profoundly tragic tiredness of all is that, so far,

you’ve not inscribed a single sentence even you

could possibly describe as eloquent. The truth is that

the only element of eloquence you’ve known resides inside

a world you own: the world you give the word itself:

pronouncing it invokes the elegant pit-patter of belles lettres

falling on the soul comme la pluie d’automne de Paris:

self-evidently elegant. By eloquent, that’s what you meant.

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