Often as not a poem gives me a right old drubbing while stealing my lunch money, cackling in cold delight all the while. Instead of picking up my Big Chief tablet, shrugging and slinking back to class, I squeal like a ninny for it to give me a wedgie and Dutch Rub to boot.
Of all the species
of eight creeping things
I burst my pink peppercorn
of DNA and became a bird,
like you.
[…]
Like me!
I adopt the guise of a messenger returning from conference with a potentate. I’m tasked with carrying report to my liege lord, the imperious brain. The trick is this: the potentate and my suzerain speak different dialects. Nominally, I straddle the void between them, a Scheherazade translator, fending off the executioner with whatever I can pretend to have heard.
What if Rick of Casablanca had said this: “Of all the gin joints in all the eight towns in all the world, she walks into mine.” Tell me there’s not a jolly problem.
There’s the affair of the peppercorn, the pink one. Everyone knows about deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the double helix and all that (nervous chuckle, bead of sweat on my brow). A bursting of this hide-and-seek spice symbol causes the speaker to become a bird, who tells this to another bird. That much is clear.
Moving on.
I found your flanks
wattle, primaries
& tail feather.
[…]
Among other things, I love the periods in this poem. They let me collect myself.
I think Bird of Paradise, because it sounds fable-Babelish, but it’s a plant. Better a Phoenix, mythical bird regenerated from fire. (Does the Phoenix have a wattle? Park that for now, your majesty. It’s of little moment for our purposes… heh-heh, sweat bead drops.)
Birds do hop, waddle and fly, not creep. That’s why “Bird” opens with a tone of disbelief, like Rick’s.
This “finding” that goes on (“I found your flanks…” etc.) is like the biblical “knowing,” a naughty euphemism. It could evoke a mating ritual — yes, two sexy, one-of-a-kind (!) Phoenixes. Myth makes its own weather, sire, like forest fires. Let’s not obsess on hermeneutics. Ask instead what twin firebird hankypanky could engender.
All our lesser holes-in-the-corner
opened like mantles
—the sun’s orange rind
flew out of the terrifying world.
(“Bird.” by Sean Singer, Poetry, September 2025)
Apocalypse is what!
In the associative spasm of a million infernos, Earth’s molten core, breaching its mantle, spurts ejecta into Sun’s dissipating corona — its rind. The egg of a future beyond conceiving is fertilized in a hail Mary of cosmic ecstasy. It’s a hellish curtain call for all terrestrial life. What’s not to be terrified by, of, for, about, your highness?
(The prepositions did their work. My lord and master has succumbed to slumber. I’ll live another day.)
Sean Singer’s nettlesome lyric tells the story it tells in the words it uses. Tell me it doesn’t. I see those words at each pass. What I’ve made of them is addled whimsy, of course, but not snide, and not mockery. The poem doesn’t need me; I need it. Reading poetry teaches me: Don’t lose your head. Be bold. Read it the high way, the low way, any way but loose. Just read it, let it look for, if not find, you; otherwise, your orange rind can’t fly out.
(c) 2025 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
EthicalDative 
‘Sheathed in Fetters’ or ‘Bound in Chains’?
“Time Out,” oil on watercolor paper, 24×30 in. (JMN 2025).
Afterthought foregrounded: This will go down as a wildly utopian, presumptuous, naive, impractical proposition. Imagine a world in which the devout were schooled from an early age to read the foundational scriptures of their respective creeds in the original languages rather than translations. Talk about a conversation of adepts. Would there be fewer arguments over religion? Not likely. But they’d be better ones.
I make my way through the Quran’s Arabic à grands coups de dictionnaire. Why resort to the dictionary when there are translations available? Because translations can diverge considerably, besides often being overly interpretive for the literal-minded language student who wants to hear the plain text talk. I do lookup to pinpoint unvarnished word meanings. It’s an exhilarating sojourn on multiple levels. Here’s an instance from today’s stint of reading (September 24, 2025).
Abraham (14:49)
وَتَرَى ٱلْمُجْرِمِينَ يَوْمَئِذٍۢ مُّقَرَّنِينَ فِى ٱلْأَصْفَادِ ٤٩
On that Day you shall see the guilty ones secured in chains;
— A. Maududi (Tafhim commentary)
Et le jour (viendra) où tu verras les criminels enchaînés les uns aux autres (en couples semblables).
— Montada Islamic Foundation
https://quran.com/14/49
The above are two translations I monitor as I go. They assist me in construing the Arabic. I also consult the Spanish translation of Julio Cortés, who was my teacher. Here’s his version:
49 Ese día verás a los culpables encadenados juntos,
The pivotal word is muqarrab(īna). It’s the past participle in masculine, accusative plural of a Form II verb having causal force with a range of meanings tightly or loosely connected to making or letting someone or something get close. It can include the taking of someone as associate or companion; also, the sheathing, or putting into its scabbard, of a sword. How does this sheathing relate to the “base” meaning, you may wonder. Good question having no immediate answer. Relationships across a semantic range can be untraceable. As with all languages, eons of usage have caused metaphorical, practical, maybe even accidental, drift. This driftiness undoubtedly accounts for some of the variations observable in translations of texts captured from oral transmission in ancient times.
Muqarrab(īna) modifies a nominal present participle, mujrim(īna), “criminals,” describing their condition of being fī-l-‘aṣfād, “in the bonds.” Wehr lists equivalents of ṣafad (pl. ‘aṣfād) as bond, tie or fetter. Why not also chain, shackle, manacle? Who knows? A bilingual dictionary can’t be a thesaurus, though Wehr often comes close. The above translations happen to agree on “chains.”
For muqarrab(īna), the French and Spanish versions key vaguely on its “companion” aspect: “chained together” in Spanish; “chained one to another (in similar couples)” in French. The English reduces it to “secured,” which isn’t exactly accounted for in Wehr’s listing. Or is it? Perhaps “secured” is akin to “sheathed,” though less literal. The putting away of a weapon brings it in companionable proximity to its owner’s waist while neutralizing it. I rather like “sheathed in fetters” for muqarrab(īna) fī-l-‘aṣfād(i). The sinners are rendered harmless in their chains, like a blade in its scabbard. Or, to modernize the simile, like a gun in its holster.
I’d love to know the thing least knowable, which is what exactly any given expression brings to the mind of a native Arabic speaker not tasked with phrasing it in any other tongue. The fantasy analogy that occurs to me is that of a psychic MRI which would show on a screen the image present in the speaker’s mind arising from reading or thinking the expression.
(c) 2025 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved