Elision

My Spanish is a bit rough around the edges after taking a semester off, but thankfully we've started the semester with something that evens the playing field: poetry. And, in particular, metrics... counting syllables and rhyme schemes and everything else, making note of stress and hiatus and synaloepha.

... Synaloepha? Yeah, that's what I did, too. Called Sinalefa in Spanish, they try to translate it into some overly Greek word I've never seen before. But you know, they longer they talk about it, the more it sounds like good, old, familiar, Elision.

And before I know it we're scanning lines of verse, counting out syllables and bridging vowels together and marking whether each line is llano, agudo, or esdrujulo, and it almost seems strange to me that we're not also making short and long, not looking for double consonants that are one of our best hints, not separating the line into dactyls... because I can do this, because this is an old game.

And suddenly it's hard to make out the Spanish, hard to keep scanning lines of

Desmayarse, atreverse, estar furioso,
áspero, tierno, liberal, esquivo,
alentado, mortal, difunto, vivo,
leal, traidor, cobarde y animoso

Because as I read I feel the pounding of waves, and Lope De Vega is morphing into Virgil.

Postquam altum tenuere rates nec iam amplius ullae
apparent terrae, caelum undique et undique pontus,
tum mihi caeruleus supra caput astitit imber
noctem hiememque ferens, et inhorruit unda tenebris.

And then, it's almost as if I'm back in Latin class, and we're teasing Mir Inaamula about wanting a "good wife" more than a sports car, and some boy I really don't like and whose name I don't remember putting candy on my desk, and it's gross and sweaty from his hands, and Mr. McAllister is trying to explain things but we're all being obstinate, and then Colin (or was it the other one?) is going over to the board and writing a parody of some pop song - I don't know where he comes up with these things - and collide is becoming elide and poor McAllister thinks that's the way the song really goes and suddenly, briefly, has respect for pop culture until we all start laughing, but afterwards I can never hear the song without thinking of it. And one cold day when I leave school late and I'm the only one left in a lot too large to walk through alone, and the song comes out of the big football speakers for some reason, with a hollow sound, and scares the nearby birds into taking flight...

Even the best fall down sometimes
Even the wrong words seem to rhyme
Out of the doubt that fills my mind
I somehow find

You and I...
Elide