#955 - one word

 

18.viii.22

955

3.228

one word

 

for Sophia Wilson

 

though each is born of the word and therefore dumb

since the word is afraid of what it has become

                                     – Vladimir Holan

 

 

I followed it back

had whiff thereof

 

spontaneous

trips off the tongue

 

and one must ask – how many?

 

which word was first

to run the world round?

 

 

dot dot dot dash …

was a cry for help

 

and now

(let us not rule out typographical error)

 

a history of phishing

the sun set off

 

line for a word for a walk

 

so many lives lived through one word

the history of wars, invasion

 

I follow it back

to find out who I was

to find out how I can be  

 

see how the trail forks?

 

but whose? from where?

 

it’s easy to think of a number

or Numbers 23:23

‘what hath God wrought’

 

I followed it far but found no beginning

 

let’s say, it’s not an argument

the oldest word was ash, was bark

was man, was mother, was not

 

kind of ghost speak  

back abysm

 

you roll it round

taste, sometimes swallow

 

by dint of conquest

word over word

each its own mystery

find it elsewhere

not the same

 

each is ours as well

prisoner of time

 

une dérive

une glisse

chases itself over hill over dale

 

winged so

into the forest of this

and which shall it be?

 

may I forbid you from?

if that’s your rabbit hole

 

a word away with the wind

and a word to chase its tail

 

let’s have it where no one knows

and in such soil

take tendril

 

a seesaw

mine yours

could be coo

is there homesickness in French?

 

sometimes light crashes in

you will hear the pleas of the lost

 

an angry quiet

love’s there left

 

all the pictures under this one

just as a city foregone

 

in favour of today’s bright

 

somebody’s first

and somebody’s last

 

and here where we’ve all been

if only the skill to read remained

 

some strictly entre nous

 

in strictu sensu

inter alia

 

one word

has come to find us

offered, never taken up

 

fragment of prayer

a god dropped

 

loskop

say – a horse’s egg

 

unu vorto rakontos mil bildojn

 

how careless they are

 

it has a history of wishing

would mean somewhere else

but that’s gone too

 

find where we may

bend it – knowing or not – to our will, to all

 

never a word bespoke

 

but every one came from a conversation

 

aspaldiko

 

choose any one you wish

look up!

 

it’s just as in the dream gone

still on the trail to this day

 

what was it said on the shore when they came?

 

mataou to pow pow –

we are afraid of the guns

 

a little lonely this one

a little riddle where

this was divulged

 

not giving any more hints

 

we will not pass by coldly

(life, death)

 

we will remember them – sad lacks!

 

a word spun away from the world

 

long hidden in an unknown corner

 

we the tribe of the one lost

left awash with rumour

sacred to ourselves as rain

 

I tremble from the music every one entails