The Odd Word

In this noise this dust this waste
of the traffic the toil
the relationships the part-time
part-heart commitments
the remorseless rap from the radio
the news of murder and treason the trash
worth millions of dollars the scraps
of subtle philosophy the divine
passionate percussion solos
something went missing
and the problem is
we don’t miss it.

In a café full of words and music
like lightning
somebody mentions Hölderlin
(a poet who went mad
after they had treated him
in a lunatic asylum)
and I remember his odd expression
‘the God’
odd isn’t it
‘the’
must be Classical Greek
I’ll clarify that.

Christina Egan © 1998

—

The phrase ‘words and music’ allude to 
a poetry event where I met my partner!
At a later reading, I presented this poem.