He spoke in cases, genders, tones,
In rolled R’s and glottal groans;
Could order beer in Latvian,
Discuss Proust in Serbian,
Explain, with scholarly precision,
The optative mood’s elusive vision,
And casually decline a noun
While trains in Prague were breaking down.
He’d whisper Finnish vowel chains
Like sleigh bells ringing through the plains,
And conjugate through seven tenses
With monk-like calm and iron senses.
But then — catastrophe arrived.
A coworker swiveled. Someone smiled.
A silence spread. A trap was laid
With all the subtlety of a marching band parade.
“Oh wow,” they said, “you know Thai too?
Say something! Go on! Anything will do!”
And suddenly his brain went white.
The servers crashed. There was no light.
His knowledge fled without a trace
Like startled pigeons into space.
French abandoned him mid-stride.
The German hid. The Swedes denied.
Mandarin climbed out a rear escape
Disguised beneath a table drape.
He stood there blinking, rigid, pale,
A woodland creature sensing jail.
A polyglot of great renown
Reduced to circus monkey-clown.
“Uh…”
A bead of sweat.
“…bonjour?”
They clapped as if he’d trained a seal
To juggle codfish on a wheel.
“WOW! Again! Say more! That’s sick!
Do the accent! Talk real quick!”
Now every language he had known
Curled up and died behind his bone.
The ancient verbs, the subtle tones,
Collapsed like poorly stacked trombones.
For this was not a conversation.
This was impromptu cabaret vocation.
Not “Tell me what you love or think,”
But “Dance, professor! Squawk in Basque! Perform in Greek! Recite in sync!”
And somewhere deep within his soul,
Past every textbook, chart, and goal,
A tiny voice cried out in pain:
“I learned Uzbek to read the trains.
Not to become your party trick, Karen.”
— Adam Donaldson Powell
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