Tonight the actors run the rehearsed lines
again. The same lines they have tried for weeks
to make stop and go like real speech.
As everyday words do. No rhymes
or devices to mar the flow of life portrayed.
on stage. In routine words they recite the show,
but it does seem as if just now
it occurred to them what needed to be said.
I have the same few thousand words
you do. Our expressions are unoriginal
(the frown, the slouch, surprise, a smile)
like the beautiful, fixed vocabulary of birds
or alphabet blocks. O is for orange.
Every toddler invents the same tower.
Each a private victory for its little builder:
Perfect, countless, duplicate lettered efforts.
You saw the same opening night performance of my son's play? You captured it exactly.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's true, all our finest expressions are a cut-up of others' ideas. I knew the one about monkeys and typewriters recreating Hamlet. But until recently I hadn't heard the one about infinite rednecks shooting buckshot into infinite roadsigns and thus spelling out the great works.