Five Verses Beginning with the Word Language

1

Language ah now you have me. Night-time tongue,

Please speak for me between the social beasts

Which quick assail me. Here I am hiding in

The jungle of mistakes of communication.

I know about jungles. I know about unkempt places

Flying toward me when I am getting ready

To pull myself together and plot the place

I speak from. I am at the jungle face

Which is my home where great and small breathers,

Experts of speaking, hang and slowly move

To say something or spring in the steaming air

Down to do the great white hunter for ever.

2

Language, but not with words, cool me down

And swipe those flies away. Why I entered

The uniform and rain-forest of my fathers

I will never know. This is a place that isn’t

The place for dying in. I find myself

Wanting to ask my mother to wipe the flies

Away. But I am frightened she should see

My shot-up face here on the paddy field.

3

Language is when the speaker kills himself

In a gesture of communication and finds

Himself even then unheard. Or language is

What people hear when they are unspoken to.

It is always the wagging of an abstract

Tongue which reaches the ear. Come down again

Into the jungle metaphor with your whiskers

Alive and ready and I will see you all right.

4

Language is my very home where pygmies

Hamstring jumbo and the young pleasure monkey

Is plucked from the tree. Do not be frightened.

You are only here to be entertained and make

Something of yourself which is not true. O,

Excuse me, do you write poetry yourself?

But I know you do. Here we are among

The great cats of stature in their literary

Camouflage and all I can do is lay

My head on the paper trying to speak and then

Shift over to have my jungle-wounded head

Easy against the flank of the yellow leopard.

5

Language, I know you don’t like words very much.

And yet I have to use you and be used.

I have always tried to destroy you. I hear

You now in the humming, buzzing, ticking under

Growth. Language, we have come a long way

From Ba-Ba. Reader, would you like to enter

But you have entered already, into here

Which is not really your place. There are no tusks

In (yours or mine) jumbo’s graveyard. The jungle

Of words is changing and the monsoon rains

Are drenching me and drenching my uniform

Which you don’t recognise. The flies are busy

Where my eyes were. Why does the language shine

Such great heat on my face. O yours truly.