Last night I attended a fabulous Indian classic dance performance and came away thinking about how body language and word language differ. This poem is the result, I hope you enjoy it.
You’re speaking my body language
In the beginning when we first/Climbed down from trees
There was the Word/That grew into many words
Until we had 7000 different languages
A tower of Babble/A hive of mental thirst
How cool is that
Everybody has a Mother Tongue/The language that tells you
About love/not love/I seem to have two
Lucky they say if you want to/Keep your brain bright
Think right/Until you’re 100
How crazy is that
I do not speak Seke/A language someone is trying to save
Because it has a unique way/Of describing our body
Like bale means arm-hand/And yaa means leg-foot
Which makes sense/If you want to grab and hold
Or walk and run/It’s all done in one fluid motion
We could cherish that way/Of thinking
How sane is that
Humpty Dumpty knew about words/But he fell off the wall
Because he changed their meaning/To suit his pleasure
Some people today are bent on that/In equal measure
So everything is distorted/leaning/In the wrong direction
How insane is that
Do we speak words or bark orders/That is the question
If you wish to come along/On the Ark of enlightenment
Where perforce everyone knows/That language is the map
But only the body is really true
How profound is that
Thank you Monika for your Indian Raga Music with classic dance and your resulting poem