Speaking In Tongues
Guided by Voices

Tatiana Retivov

SECOND WINDS


Across the cracking wires
I send you three knots of wind,
the better to breathe with.


Gathered at sea, they are fast
and furious with the scorn
of a shipwreck. Hence


their homeopathy. The first, an Eastern
wind to launch new endeavors with smoothly.
The second, the West wind, to restore


all hope abandoned. The third, North wind
to allow you to divine wherein
the fourth wind might lie hidden.


You may release them one by one,
or all together. Either way,
They will deliver as instructed


once they whip across the rolling steppe,
as desperate and wayward as fractals
in search of a common morphology.