By Rachelle Delle |
We are wanderers from the four corners
Carrying our mother-tongue like a sweet burden
The inevitable winds of time twisting us together,
Stirring our hearts to pour out our mouths.
Our languages coil upon themselves like serpents.
A writhing clamor of knots.
We begin to mix orthography with our tongues.
We build brick words with our lips.
The edges of our teeth cutting them to fit.
Walls of sentences stretch ceaselessly skywards,
Casting shadows over the mountain’s blunted crown
Slicing the slumbering clouds,
Stabbing the widow’s veil of the heavens.
One elastic language binds the world together
Gripping her face tightly like a muzzle.
We are her voice now.
We spend our lives, our children’s’ lives, numberless generations
Building upon our scaffolding of syntax.
All our stories, her stories, his stories, histories, surmounting nonsense,
But we work incessantly into the years.
Just for a chance to touch the face of God.
So, when the last generation clambers up our skeletal tower
Perching proudly on its swaying zenith
Full of exhausted defiance and
Stretching out his beggar’s hand--
Where shall we go from here?
Will we collapse into imminent inertia?
Or might we toil on
Until the whole world is buried beneath our industry,
Blackened like oil by our weapons of words?
ENJAMBED | SPRING 2020
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