Traddutore, Traditore
Uncle Barber’s tangled tongue
Turns his
words to mush;
Vowel, consonant, diphthong
Thicken
into slush.
We know that he’s intelligent;
The
expressions of his face
Give us a hint, more than a hint,
Dementia’s
not the case.
Aunt Hannah interprets his every word,
Yet as we
follow along
Some things she says are so absurd
She must
have got them wrong.
We cannot avoid a dark suspicion:
Isn’t there
more than a tinge
In her tone of caustic, mocking derision?
That would
be her perfect revenge.
Source of the text – Fred Chappell, Family Gathering. Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000, p. 39.
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