RetroLounge
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Sun May-25-08 07:58 AM
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The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Sun 5/25/2008) |
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The Forgotten Dialect Of The Heart How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say, God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according to which nation. French has no word for home, and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people in northern India is dying out because their ancient tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would finally explain why the couples on their tombs are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated, they seemed to be business records. But what if they are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light. O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper, as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor. Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script is not laguage but a map. What we feel most has no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.
Jack Gilbert
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:hi:
RL
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xchrom
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Sun May-25-08 08:20 AM
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My joy is the same as twelve Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
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RetroLounge
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Sun May-25-08 03:04 PM
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O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper, as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor.
RL
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lizziegrace
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Sun May-25-08 08:33 AM
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:hug:
never stop trying to put into words feelings for which there are no adequate words...
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CaliforniaPeggy
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Sun May-25-08 05:00 PM
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The language of love, of the heart...
For which there is no adequate language...
But still, we must try!
Thank you
:hi:
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Lyric
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Sun May-25-08 05:02 PM
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5. I love this kind of poem. |
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The decadence of the language pulls me in every time.
:hug:
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RetroLounge
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Sun May-25-08 09:43 PM
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6. "The decadence of the language" |
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exactly...
:hug:
I got turned onto Jan Beatty's new book. All I can say is wow...
RL
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DU
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Thu May 02nd 2024, 12:06 AM
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