A list of 2 words by kalayzich.
Tip: Add several words or phrases at once by separating them with semicolons. Don't worry about surrounding whitespace -- we'll ignore it.
poem
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.
kalayzich commented on the list vocabularies
Vocabularies
Like stars, or swarming bees, or flocks of birds,
We think them hardly countable, our words.
Yet fifty thousand's all we use, it seems,
For truth and lies, reality and dreams.
Which puzzles me. The world's more things than that.
Do languages grow lean as lives grow fat?
Is so much absent from our brains and eyes?
What's lost, I say, when we economize?
There's too much difference we make the same.
All poets love the miracle of name
Yet mourn exactitudes they cannot state:
The single noun that might denominate
Their moods of quietness like falling snow,
Or yearn for lexicons they cannot know:
The speech of eagles, what the dolphins sing,
The glossolalia of leaves in spring...
Nothing, we dream, could bring us to content
But fifty million words for what we meant,
To fit whatever happened like a glove,
Redeeming lost pluralities of love,
Until we wake to truth, and see again
Unharvested, like leagues of sunset grain,
Outnumbering all stars and bees and birds,
The matchless universe beyond our words.
May 23, 2017
by David Sutton
ruzuzu commented on the list vocabularies
My new favorite list! Thanks, kalayzich.
kalayzich commented on the list vocabularies
Vocabularies
Like stars, or swarming bees, or flocks of birds,
We think them hardly countable, our words.
Yet fifty thousand's all we use, it seems,
For truth and lies, reality and dreams.
Which puzzles me. The world's more things than that.
Do languages grow lean as lives grow fat?
Is so much absent from our brains and eyes?
What's lost, I say, when we economize?
There's too much difference we make the same.
All poets love the miracle of name
Yet mourn exactitudes they cannot state:
The single noun that might denominate
Their moods of quietness like falling snow,
Or yearn for lexicons they cannot know:
The speech of eagles, what the dolphins sing,
The glossolalia of leaves in spring...
Nothing, we dream, could bring us to content
But fifty million words for what we meant,
To fit whatever happened like a glove,
Redeeming lost pluralities of love,
Until we wake to truth, and see again
Unharvested, like leagues of sunset grain,
Outnumbering all stars and bees and birds,
The matchless universe beyond our words.
May 23, 2017
kalayzich commented on the list vocabularies
by David Sutton
May 23, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list vocabularies
My new favorite list! Thanks, kalayzich.
May 23, 2017