Words

Carl Spitzweg

Words

Words are my instruments but not my servants;  

by the white pillar of a prince I lie in wait 

for them. In what the hour or the minute invents, 

in a web formally meshed or inchoate, 

these fritillaries are come upon, trapped:  

hot-coloured, or the cold scarabs a thousand years 

old, found in cerements and unwrapped.  

The catch and the ways of catching are diverse.  

For instance this stooping man, the bones of whose face are like

the hollow birds' bones, is a trap for words.  

And the pockmarked house bleached by the glare 

whose insides war has dried out like gourds  

attracts words. There are those who capture them  

in hundreds, keep them prisoners in black  

bottles, release them at exercise and clap them back.  

But I keep words only a breath of time 

turning in the lightest of cages - uncover  

and let them go: sometimes they escape for ever.

Keith Douglas

“The catch and the ways of catching are diverse.” Golly. It’s taking everything in me not to gush over this poem.

 It’s freakin’ fantastic.

What the Light Teaches

Steven Outram

What the Light Teaches

Language is the house with lamplight in its windows,

visible across fields. Approaching, you can hear

music; closer, smell

soup, bay leaves, bread - a meal for anyone

who has only his tongue left.

It's a country; home, family;

abandoned, burned down; whole lines dead, unmarried.

For those who can't read their way in the streets,

or in the gestures and faces of strangers,

language is the house to run to;

in wild nights, chased by dogs and other sounds,

when you've been lost a long time,

when you have no other place.

There are nights in the forest of words

when I panic, every step into thicker darkness,

the only way out to write myself into a clearing,

which is silence.

Nights in the forest of words

when I'm afraid we won't hear each other

over clattering branches, over

both our voices calling.

In winter, in the hour

when the sun runs liquid then freezes,

caught in the mantilla of empty trees;

when my heart listens

through the cold stethoscope of fear,

your voice in my head reminds me

what the light teaches.

Slowly you translate fear into love,

the way the moon's blood is the sea.

Anne Michaels

This is one of my favorite images - light from a distant window. If you’ve ever been out for a long walk at night when the air turns chill, you’ll know that nothing can make you feel more lonesome or full of longing than the light of a home window. It can be either the anticipation of warmth and welcome, or the cruel reminder that you are outside.  I absolutely love the line, “Language is the house with lamplight in its windows, visible across fields.” I have to pause and think. Is she saying that language is the hope of warmth and belonging, the invitation to relationships, to shelter? “Language is the house to run to.” How interesting. Until this poem, I had not thought of it like that. Writing, speech, language, can be a place to find yourself when you’ve been lost. It’s true, isn’t it? “Slowly you translate fear into love.” And isn’t that exactly what we’re attempting? To write out (or speak out) the darkness, the lostness, the loneliness – to work our way Home? Is Language that magic? Can words do all that?