#596 - first word

 

20.viii.21

596

2.231

first word

 

the gods themselves inspire my every word

and I make up all my own material

 – Homer’s Phemius

 

first word!

and thy will be done

breaking news –

CHILD WRAPS PARENTS ROUND FINGER

 

with all the drama of another age

none question this authority

 

just one touch kiss

truth stands like a statue

it’s as if the dreamer spoke!

 

what a tale to tell!

there aren’t the books for this one word

to follow or interpret

 

I might have fallen into error

(and everyone lives there)

 

now a world is made

eyes up in the geometry

 

now the parallel lines never meet

but we remember bliss

the eager nod, go on

first word!

 

whispers and mumbles, deceits all later

 

the first word was never chosen

but came by way of tongue tip

out of thin air

or shall we say chatter?

 

like a lock of hair

in a bible fold

now an ironclad decree

 

and – don’t you know? –

people will make up stories

but no one really remembers that word

they may remember remembering

 

words themselves each are remembrance

and will be loss to mourn

because far and deep

 

the width of a word

itself is an edge

 

rattle at the end of the cot

reach for

 

first word in which

the thousand years

 

cognates all awash

there’s one to

climb up a tree

 

and another one under

one over, on top

some say birds gave this

some growl!

and then there’s pounding clock

 

a rhumba!

set up the spoken chain

 

suddenly over the fence

 

meaning is equally forest and sea

with just a first word we set out

into the conversation

 

anyone can

needs must

then

in and on another tongue

I must be relentless

 

larger than any life before

of elsewhere and fantastic

insist!

 

I make the language making me

it’s something you just have to see

 

and so it is tip of another

imperial ruins!

come into the nation I build

 

some say primitive scrawl or yowl

 

my trumpet to take the walls down

 

like the death day you pass every year

             never knowing so

my not remembering what that word was

           makes sacred the trust

           of all said, done

 

and this, friends, has come about only

because my first word was believed