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“The road is a word, conceived elsewhere and laid across the country in the wound prepared for it: a word made concrete and thrust among us.”
― Wendell Berry
“PHOSPHORESCENCE. Now there's a word to lift your hat to... to find that phosphorescence, that light within, that's the genius behind poetry.”
― Emily Dickinson
“The words with which a child's heart is poisoned,
whether through malice or through ignorance,
remain branded in his memory, and
sooner or later they burn his soul.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
“Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace.”
― Gautama Buddha, The Dhammapada
Midweek Motif ~
The Song of a Single Word
One day our Sumana sent me a song she translated, and said:
I tried to translate it, but it's quite hard to do it in English. I lost all the cadences of the beautiful Sanskrit words which themselves are songs.
This made me wonder if any of my words~in English, German, Latin or any language at all~contain songs all by themselves. Or does a word spark a song?
Your challenge: Chose a word which sings to you. Write a poem from its lyrics ~ or write a lyrical poem in answer to it. Enjoy!
BY PABLO NERUDA
Translated by T.M. Lauth
Translated by T.M. Lauth
I’m going to wrinkle this word,
I’m going to twist it,
yes,
it is much too flat
it is as if a great dog or great river
had passed its tongue or water over it
during many years.
I want that in the word
the roughness is seen
the iron salt
The de-fanged strength
of the land,
the blood
of those who have spoken and those who have not spoken.
I want to see the thirst
Inside the syllables
I want to touch the fire
in the sound:
I want to feel the darkness
of the cry. I want
words as rough
as virgin rocks.
(Found HERE)
Related Poem Content Details
I never hear the word “Escape”
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation –
A flying attitude!
I never hear of prisons broad
By soldiers battered down,
But I tug childish at my bars
Only to fail again!
Related Poem Content Details
I don’t know when it slipped into my speech
that soft word meaning, “if God wills it.”
Insha’Allah I will see you next summer.
The baby will come in spring, insha’Allah.
Insha’Allah this year we will have enough rain.
So many plans I’ve laid have unraveled
easily as braids beneath my mother’s quick fingers.
Every language must have a word for this. A word
our grandmothers uttered under their breath
. . . .
(Read the rest of this amazing poem HERE)
Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community.
(Next week Sumana's Midweek Motif will be ~ Predator and Prey ! )
