Particular Speech

Margaret Manners

And now we have the dark beat
of the clockwork devil
and the stare of hypnotic love.

Dancers posturing in a trance
while the radios play and play
and we have forgotten what we want.

Fold impersonal hands and sweat
praying to the iron heart
in careful gibberish.

They will call us
the age that did not know its word,
the age of alien tongues.