The Private Life of the Tongue

At home unfathomable and secret
it had reasons of its own
tucked into a single bed behind closed doors
 
in the individual loneliness of his mouth.
For long periods in the afternoons
it would contract itself and draw in
 
unable to lengthen, reach over and open the curtains.
Did the room have a frescoed ceiling?
Attendants bowing and sliding backwards
 
in anticipation of le grand lever?
The word she wanted to hear
speaking to her alone: she imagined it
 
on the shiny tip of his tongue,
a mahogany piano standing upright in a corner,
superior and dark, its great lid shut
 
as Mozart waited lightly on the keys.
In all probability it had no more
to do with her than a chapel in the woods
 
whose altar with its one dry candle
had remained unvisited for years.
Never mind if it lay there dreaming
 
of the ritual of tucking in, the kiss goodnight.
She knew it would settle back to the shapes
it had taken in its other lives remembering
 
how it played havoc in a young boy
lying with its steaming pink root exposed
on a large plate in the kitchen
 
or hanging out a very red red
from the mouth of a black dog
it was impossible to avoid on his way to school.
 

Martha Kapos

in collection The Likeness, 2014, Enitharmon Press,
ISBN 978-1-9075873-9-9