formalities

i’ve spent thirty years at this, and ten years at another, and am so dis-spirited at both endeavors that i barely wish to utter a word in another language—except as a joke. i am at the sad position, in the middle of brodsky’s ‘piazza mattei,’ that i always come to: where the language has bowled me over. this happens every single time in my native tongue in a poem i love, but it is always impossible to respond to two tongues over. that is the sad, inebriate state i’ve spent my conscious life in. i suppose it’s blasé, and unfair, to blaim freud or marx, but i do. they are almost overwhelming paradigms…