It's just poetry, it won't bite

I Want to Hear Strange Tongues


07.01.18 Posted in today's words by

Max Reif’s most recent poem to appear here was “Traveler Lost in City Center” (May 2018).

I Want to Hear Strange Tongues
By Max Reif

I want to hear strange tongues around me,
saying things I don’t understand—
music and not sense!

I want to be in the dark
and let the impressions form themselves
from the light reflections into my eyes,
the sound waves in my ears,
not from interpretation and explanation.

Even my coffee tastes better “decafinato.”
I like it that your word for chair
makes me want to sit down
or just gaze at the object’s beauty,

and because imagination
can bring us closer to
the truth and freshness
of eternal NOW,

your word for God
seems to open the pantheon
of my own temple of worship
wider toward its merging
in the unlimited
spiritual sky.



2 Responses to “I Want to Hear Strange Tongues”

  1. Hiram Larew says:

    This poem broadens as it goes. Thanks!

  2. Howard Stein says:

    Beautiful, succinct poem; evocative, haunting. An antidote to the current American regime’s recipe for a giant wall across the southern border. I love the turn beginning with the fourth stanza from the world of the five senses to the world of the Spirit — both equally stretching and renewing. This is a poem to Remember and to cherish.

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