"Everyone needs one untranslatable song."
                     ----Juarroz

On hearing the striped contralto of guinea fowl,
its mock opera quivers the parsley atop its head-- 

The song makes its imprint
in the air, making itself felt, 
a felt world. Here, there, 
the stunned silence 
of knowing I will not remember 
what I heard;

futures
that will never happen, 
a fluidity we cannot achieve 
except as a child 
creating possibility.

This is the untranslatable song
hidden in the earth.