Losing A Language

 

this is where you start forgetting the words

       Meng Hao-Jan, "Sent To Ch'ao"

 

 

 

Having lived a long time alone he has left his voice

 

Far behind, seeing no one, saying nothing to anyone

 

For long weeks, no longer even thinking out loud,

 

Though there is never solitude - all day the birds,

 

Each saying again and again the one thing it knows,

 

Each a scripted part of this scene he has come to

 

Where it is not any answering words but his silence

 

That has let him enter, play his small part in a story,

 

A language, not his.  And so what he writes is always

 

Metaphor and myth, the legend he has made of age

 

And exile, how in the end a last passage is never to

 

But from, and how there are no words to say how

 

It goes on from here.  The birds have no answer,

 

Dark settling over their own silence, moonlight on

 

The tipped well bucket, pouring out its emptiness.

 

 

 





Poetry by countryfog
Read 606 times
Written on 2015-04-14 at 19:08

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Lawrence Beck The PoetBay support member heart!
Everybody seems to like the bucket, which I agree is a striking image, but my favorite part of this poem is:

in the end a last passage is never to
But from, and how there are no words to say how
It goes on from here

This is the essential mystery, isn't it?
2015-04-18



This is so inspirational because it offers something so difficult to Grasp on a first reading.
It is a language found.
2015-04-16


Jamsbo Rockda The PoetBay support member heart!
Very good. I love to watch birds, especially when they feed at sunset. Perhaps eventually you become one with them if you spend enough time being there. The bucket of emptiness is superb.
2015-04-15



The entire poem is superb, but I especially like the closing image of the bucket in the moonlight, pouring out emptiness. There is an emptiness that can be poured, that can be drawn from the well of emptiness to slake the thirst of the emptiness that resides in all of us.

The poet who wrote this may have lost a language, but he has gained another one, perhaps one richer and one that even the birds can translate.
2015-04-14