Don’t write ‘yew’ instead of ‘you’ in a futile attempt at wit. It’s not original and it’s not cool. It only pisses people off who, say, search youtube for the term ‘yew’, hoping to find videos like this one and instead find dozens of nonsense videos with corny, overcoloured pictures and pop-techno songs with mock children’s voices.
The only exception is when the ambiguity is deliberate, like in this poem by Jehanne Mehta which I am copying from this book.
Nearing the brink
Every path winds away into wilderness
like wet ivy clinging to old walls…
I am nearing the brink of yew.Rath of vertiginous shadow,
teeming with metaphor,
I cannot reach yew with words…
the phrases break off and crumble.
Everywhere is edge.For yew I have to relinquish my deaths,
truly inhabit my heart, for
with yew time has no measure:
it opens like a mouth.I could fall into yew
and come up green and smiling
in the garden
before the fall;But yew will not let me in before time.
I need first to awaken to the rhythm
of roots,
to the folded growth
always new, always stirring under my skin,
potent and soft as berries.I am at the brink.
Already so many of my words have been swallowed by yew…
pages, without trace.Wet winds, wilderness,
old walls…
The path disappears.I want to be with yew,
at the heart of yew,
where I can hear yew singing,
that close.Will yew open?
Will yew let me in?
