for Pat

 

Who decid­ed a door would be a door,
une porte, eine tür? You were intrigued
how words were born
and how some just don’t translate
as if their lan­guages con­spired to keep
the mean­ings to themselves.
Your native hywl was one you said
no  Eng­lish word could capture.

I wish I could tell you how in Japanese
some adjec­tives like kind, intel­li­gent,
con­ju­gate to show they’re in the past,
there is no future tense
and my online dic­tio­nary offers
over twen­ty dif­fer­ent words for tears.

 

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