tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905172.post8525101416791907774..comments2023-12-29T08:35:56.504-05:00Comments on the rising mist: Office of dead languagesnorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02228725106863747984noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905172.post-45236434938339630202007-09-26T10:40:00.000-04:002007-09-26T10:40:00.000-04:00Thanks, Chris. I got the idea for the haiku from t...Thanks, Chris. I got the idea for the haiku from this NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/19/science/19language.html.<BR/><BR/>Dana Gioia (www.danagioia.net) is one of my favorite poets, and the poem from which I took the quote is probably my favorite:<BR/><BR/>Words<BR/><BR/>The world does not need words. It articulates itself<BR/>in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path<BR/>are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.<BR/>The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being.<BR/>The kiss is still fully itself though no words were spoken.<BR/><BR/>And one word transforms it into something less or other—<BR/>illicit, chaste, perfunctory, conjugal, covert.<BR/>Even calling it a kiss betrays the fluster of hands<BR/>glancing the skin or gripping a shoulder, the slow<BR/>arching of neck or knee, the silent touching of tongues.<BR/><BR/>Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot<BR/>name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica.<BR/>To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper—<BR/>metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa<BR/>carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.<BR/><BR/>The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds,<BR/>painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving<BR/>each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it.<BR/>The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always—<BR/>greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon.norahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02228725106863747984noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905172.post-20004222209060770592007-09-26T07:00:00.000-04:002007-09-26T07:00:00.000-04:00i like the Gioia quote very much and agree with yo...i like the Gioia quote very much and agree with you that as a language dies (is lost) so to does that way of describing the world and thus 'that' the world (... was about to go into a whole philosophy lecture, but have stopped myself i keep boring people). <BR/><BR/>this is my favourite haiku of yours so far. keep it up!god-free moralshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16607043107377719807noreply@blogger.com