Three Poems by Michael Bazzett

A Whole New Vida

The limits of my language
are the limits of my world.
      —Wittgenstein

It would probably be a good idea
before we go much further
to inform you that I’m learning to speak another language.

Palabras just keep leaking in,
almost without my noticing,
because I’ve become so deeply immersed in the process of acquiring this new lengua.

My familia are hinting intimations
that I’m starting to become a little
latoso, not to mention aburrido, but I’m dedicated to approaching it

almost como una practica religiosa,
which I enter, as I would a church,
wearing clean and well-pressed clothing, and an aspect of great focus and disciplina,

As you may have noticed
from the idle word that has
in all likelihood drifted into these lines like an ava through the window,

my accent is devastatingly good,
and in the streets I will admit
that there are times when I am mistaken for a Canadian, or even a Belgian.

Yes, it makes almost three months
since that I have studied the Spanish,
and this now has produced in me and my vida an almost meditative calm, una calma

that I attribute to my practice –
because, like a monk buddhista,
I am eternally aqui in the time of the presente – the past and the futura

don’t fully exist for me –
they remain a blank and
unconjugated space, where the tired poetry of tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

is replaced with the rhythm
of ahora, y ahora, y ahora,
and I wake every mañana to enter the day fresh, breakfast myself with a new tongue,

and look through the windows to a changed vista and correctly announce: There is sun.

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