Your Names Have to Change

By drift, by fiat, or request—
We’re swapped out, rotated, ruled out
By revolution or conquest—

Whole chunks of discourse, reference,
Historical names, toponyms,
Sets of pronouns, fresh acronyms.

We change internally, as well.
Use wears our edges, turns our guts.
Vowels mutate. Contractions shift.

What sounded most colloquial
To poets in centuries past
Is what sounds most archaic now.

We’re fought over and torn apart,
Banned, abandoned, and forgotten.
Names change like you wouldn’t believe

To litter language with phrasal
Bones. No lives, not even the leaves,
Have made so many skeletons.