537, poem, poetry, satire, linguistics, Epstein, Chomsky

GENERATIONAL TRANSFORMATIONS

when I first
heard you were
in those files

I thought I must
have misheard
your name
being mentioned – –
how the Hell
could it have
turned up
there, Wow! WTF,
I mean
there but for the grace
of God, how
can it be
go figure!

unless
it was just a typo

or a mess up
in the transformational
generative grammar
as it maps
the deep structure into
the surface syntax

garbling everything we
near universally agreed
you (dear emeritus
professor)

felt in your heart
of hearts,
did most radically think and believe