ALPHABET
by Felix Fojas
(Originally appeared in the first issue of the relaunched Evergreen Review,
New York, a prestigious international magazine founded by Barney Rosset,
a world-renowned publisher, and which featured a host of writers before
they became Nobel Prize winners. The first issue of this mag featured
Jean-Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, Henri Michaux and Michael Hamburger).
In kindergarten our elders
Teach us to memorize by heart
Each sugarcoated letter
In the ABC of lies
Because the aspirin of fact
Is a tough act to swallow.
Then we slowly learn
To shape letter into
Plain words of truth.
Afterwards, we graduate
To the art of stringing
Beads of pearly words
Into lustrous sentences.
A necklace of deception.
Finally we ourselves become
Masters of prevarication
And fabricate sentences
Into flawless paragraphs
Of falsehood which we print
Into a hardbound handbook
Of light and circulate
To the coming generation
While the primer of truth
Gathers dust and cobwebs
In some dark, stuffy corner
Of the inarticulate.
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