Foreign Accent Syndrome
The knotty folds of flesh and thought
must contain the roots of words, French and
German, tonal Mandarin, thrusting like black
icicles, thin shards through the other rummage of
our brains. Occasionally a lode’s unlocked, a
link loosened. During the war, an American pilot
shot down under friendly fire and convalescing
began talking in tongues, chatty and fluent in
his enemies’ language, but lost to his own.
It happens sometimes, a hard knock, a
rattling blow, and a North Idaho native begins
talking in Russian, the cleats of his contemplation
slipping and worn. Our hope in this is for erasure
of our common difference. Let there be a
clever Rosetta stone submersed in the wordless
babble of brain. Perhaps the young combatants
in this latest war could be made to talk? If only the
suspicion of difference could be cleaved from us.
But it’s a transitory affliction, a temporary change:
the young pilot improves and forgets his
facility, the Idaho window-cleaner falls into
coma and is struck silent. Their suspicious accents,
condemning consonants absorbed in the ineffable
scramble of their thoughts. It doesn’t matter. Though
I have always had a common language with my son,
both of us branching from the same bitter tree, we
have never been able to understand each other.