World Without Suffix
Why do you ask my name, which is mysterious?
……………………………………… —Judges 13:18
Methylchloroisothiazolinone.
It’s in all the shampoos that sit on the bathtub’s
edge. Having no idea what it is, I look it up
and after scanning some abstruse periodic
letters, I discover it belongs to a class
of heterocycles that kill various bacteria.
As I have no idea what a heterocycle is,
I look it up and learn it’s a cyclic
compound with atoms of differing
elements that form part
of the ring or rings.
But I don’t know what most of that
means, either, and everything hyperlinks
to yet another obscure Latin term
that makes me think of papal decrees
and bad news from the doctor.
I walk away from the screen
of blue words, trying to imagine
a world before altar bells
and liturgies and the scattered
debris of Babel’s fall.
Before all the drama
with serpents and apples—
when animals had not yet been named,
and the garden was wild
with coconut and sativa—
Before the first cry in the desert
became an alphabet,
and God became a word
we couldn’t say.
by Martin Vest
from Rattle Magazine
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