#607 - a language is another country

 

31.viii.21

607

2.242

a language is another country

 

wraps you in a flag

let’s say the one you’re in

fall through a few times

to find your feet

 

it is philosophy complete

swallows religions whole

 

has its own geometry

loyalty assured

furthest galaxies obey

 

all in your head

the obverse reverse

standing army

 

place of birth

the all ancestral lamps to light

and appetite

then mirth

 

it is the idiomatic hutch

and everywhere-luggage

brought you so far

 

shall we approach

to press the skysill?

 

this language

yet to learn

is the bag of tricks you are

 

 

a poem is another world

 

spins on its own – how many wheels?

 

go there when the cupboard is bare

 

remember this room?

place the furniture where it suits itself

 

there need be no wicked witch

 

my duty is to do there

only what cannot be helped

 

in the poll they ask ‘have you been before?’

everything automatic has to be turned on its head

 

this is the place of start again

 

like talking to a dog in a haystack

 

truth made of error, pure intention

 

and past perimeter limits

where the colours come

who’ll name them?

 

each one after a cloud

I once knew

and how we caught the sun

 

use all the light that there is

 

words are the way

I will know where I am

 

conjugants and lost declensions

 

set out never knowing who

 

I work with the words

to make a world

where else is there to go?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

two, three

over the rainbow

do you suppose, Toto…

a place where there isn’t any trouble?

 

I am learning the language

to make the poem

 

I have to be wrong

a lot to be right

 

take sky

spun from chaos

or leave it

 

I am learning the world

to make the words

 

the words to make a world

 

I have brought my passport of poetry

so much as this horizon

(makes everything foreign to me)

 

I write the poem

to make the language

                          apt

 

I am taking the time that is given

I am spreading out

dust, wings

road long as life

 

no two moments the same

 

the surface of the pond

a drop

tell tear

 

I greet you with beginner’s luck

(take off one head

screw on another)

 

replace tongue too

tune heart

adjust a landscape

 

where things have no name

I cannot see the trees for the wood

 

but here’s my pot of gold

 

I am taking the words

just where they go

to tell you all

what you cannot yet know

 

can’t help but wonder –

will I be believed there?

will I be understood?