His Love of Semicolons


The comma is comely, the period, peerless,
                 but stack them one atop
the other, and I am in love; what I love
                 is the end that refuses to stop,
the promise that something will come in a moment
                 though the saying seem all said;
a grammatical afterlife, fullness that spills
                 past the fullstop, not so much dead
as taking a breather, at worst, stunned;
                 the sentence regroups and restarts,
its notation bespeaking momentum, its silence
                 dividing the beats of a heart.


- Amit Majmudar (from Umbrella)

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