A Poem For Today - For the Student Who Said Grammar Doesn’t Matter When People Are Dying

[kdick...@aol.com]

For the Student Who Said Grammar Doesn’t Matter When People Are Dying

What can kill is unclarity.
The misplaced modifier, for instance:
Having no hope, the wind didn’t move him.
Did the wind have no hope?
Clearly the writer meant,
Having no hope, he wasn’t moved by the wind.
But someone no doubt had told the writer
about the passive voice, to avoid it
at all costs, like passion,
and the writer, feeling with a chill
how costly life can be
when we are passive (the lover’s last knock
unanswered at the door),
opted for this construction.
Having no hope, the wind didn’t move him.
The difference
is between mystery and confusion,
between the wind’s stillness and a soul
that won’t be opened.
And why not? Why can’t
the wind hope?
I don’t know. I just know
it matters. Everything matters. What is erasing
what. Who is bombing whom.
It took me all day to misunderstand correctly:
Forgetting their children, the conquerors

destroyed them.

Joseph Fasano

[Patricia Rios]

Very interesting 🤔!

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[Chris Wells]

I agree!

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[John Jai Conley]

For the lack of a comma, the meaning was lost.

It matters.

Jai

The way you look at things is the most powerful force in shaping your life.

John O’Donohue

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[Isabel Torres-Carrilho]

What can I say, I agree with the student 

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