Thursday, July 19, 2007

Lost Wor(l)ds

Ghosts speak dead languages –
the air shimmers with their lost wor(l)ds
full of unlearnt wisdom
that we waft away like smoke.

While we struggle to understanding
speaking in our second language -
untranslatable fears
haunting the table.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

I admit to being puzzled. Your poem is very... deep and I find myself reading over and over again, but lacking understanding.

Crafty Green Poet said...

Rose I'm not sure I understand it either. It sort of wrote itself from lots of ideas I was thinking about languages.

Anonymous said...

very interesting poem. I rather like it, but like Rose, I'm not sure I quite understand it

paris parfait said...

I suppose you mean the language of ghosts, then our own first language? It's a little confusing, but so is the whole business about ghosts! I like the poem.

Anonymous said...

Somehow I think you are talking about the babel of languages inside our heads. I read it that way.

Posted another poem for PT. Click on my name here to go there.

daisies said...

i like it ... its like the lost forgotten language that sits deep inside, wordless but there ... very cool ...

Deb said...

I like how the meaning shimmers indistinctly. And especially "wor(l)ds", lost.

Tumblewords: said...

We have the answers but we form questions that work at odds with them. Nice poetry!

sister AE said...

I hear a story in this poem. A tale of the past, full of things we haven't yet learned or relearned, having heavy all around us while we fight (almost against the grain) to learn from that history. Sort of a take on "those who don't learn their history are doomed to repeat it"? That's my read.

I love that a poem can strike different chords in different people. Some of the poems I've written with a definite image in mind have evoked something very different in other readers.

sister AE said...

make that "hanging heavy" - sigh, I really hate typos.

Constance Brewer said...

I like it, especially the words "that we waft away like smoke". So true when we talk of the past, or unpleasant things.

Annie Jeffries said...

wor(l)ds. Excellent making two words into one. There is an immediate feeling of reading this line on two different levels at once. Lost worlds and lost words. All the history we have lost. Wisdom we have lost.

shadows and clouds said...

wow!! how stunning! i like the play with the word/world, and the shimmering of unlearnt wisdom. i like that you said it kind of wrote itself, it's nice when that happens! maybe it was the words of the ghosts speaking that you picked up on! :) have a good weekend

Holly Mac said...

I love the feel of this poem and I too love the use of "wor(l)ds" It lends to the broken language theme of the poem.
I love the sense that there is a stream of language that we don't often understand surrounding us and passing through us. And I love the idea that these languages, however foreign or forgotten still somehow manage to shape us.