Cassandra   

by A. E. Stallings

 A. E. Stallings
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Cassandra



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If I may have failed to follow
Your instructions, lord Apollo,
So all my harping lies unstrung,
I blame it on the human tongue.

Our speech ever was at odds
With the utterance of gods:
Tenses have no paradigm
For those translated out of time.

Perhaps mortals should rejoice
To conjugate in passive voice— 
The alphabet to which I go
Is suffering, and ends in O.

Paraphrase can only worsen:
For you, there is no second person,
“I want” the same verb as “must be,”
“Love,” construed as “yield to me,”

The homonym of “curse” and “give,”
No mood but the infinitive.

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