Let us speak, let us speak—
Silence does not suit us, since
We’re Created in the image of the Word.²
Write a Word on a piece of paper, and it
Stays there, unmoving—but your thoughts & feelings
Are on their way to the Farthest Corners of the world!³
Come on Poets—Word it till it’s yours!⁴
We cross desolate stretches
Of land where Words drag us,
Making our wanderings bear
Amazed witness to its Perennial Nature.⁵
Apt Words have power to ‘suage tumors of a
Troubled mind, and are as Balm to festered wounds.⁶
Words are Dark Stars—some are small, dull, solid—
Some immense, complex, subtle—with a powerful
Gravity-field that attracts Infinite Meanings to them!⁷
Words beget Presences impossible to confirm
Given the Blind action of time.⁸
The substantial words are
In the Ground and the Sea—
They are in the Air—they are in Us!⁹
We eat & drink the precious Words—
Our Spirits grow Robust—
We know no more that we are Poor
Nor that our frame is Dust!¹⁰
¹ Paul Celan tr. Popov & McHugh, I Know You
² C.P. Cavafy tr. Rae Dalven, The Word and Silence
³ Inger Christenson tr. Susanna Nied, Silk, the Universe, Language, the Heart
⁴ Rae Armantrout, Flux
⁵ Edmond Jabès tr. Rosemarie Waldrop, The Desert
⁶ John Milton, Samson Agonistes
⁷ Ursula K. Le Guin, Paradises Lost
⁸ Li-Young Li, Changing Places in the Fire
⁹ Walt Whitman, A Song of the Rolling Earth
¹⁰ Emily Dickinson, He Ate and Drank the Precious Words