Monosyllabic
Let me be monosyllabic to-day, O Lord. Yesterday I loosed a snarl of words on a fool, on a child.
To-day, let me be monosyllabic ... a crony of old men who wash sunlight in their fingers and enjoy slow-pacing clocks.
Carl Sandburg
Let me be monosyllabic to-day, O Lord. Yesterday I loosed a snarl of words on a fool, on a child.
To-day, let me be monosyllabic ... a crony of old men who wash sunlight in their fingers and enjoy slow-pacing clocks.
The speaker begins with a kind of prayer, asking to be “monosyllabic” today. The day before, he lashed out—he calls it loosing “a snarl of words” on a fool and on a child. Now he feels guilty and wants to strip his speech down to its plainest, gentlest form.
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