Particular Speech

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.