It is a difficult time.
Hope you and your loved ones are safe.
The times are trying.
Surreal.
How are you coping?
Hope we see this through together
help
love
prayers
Prayers
I’m here
Tell me
SOS
Please take care
Please take care
Please take care
It began with bookending emails, or messages; almost courtesy - mini-hurdles that came in the way of what we actually wanted to say. When it returned (never really having gone away) with all the epic fury of The Great Flood, we found new words, and recast old metaphors, to try and articulate the inadequacy, the helplessness - faith hope love C+ Mahamari Kalyug mismanagement apathy “on our knees” rout disaster apocalypse ‘Noah or Nero’ fire tsunami cyclone breakdown rot system decay death life birth global catastrophe breath air.
Many years from now, the way language evolved to try and contain this time would become a marker of the impact of the pandemic, and our collective state of mind. In fact, the strained syntax that punctuates our calls for help and our attempts at constructing reality without sentiment, reveals more. The word sits in our bones, and makes a home in our wrinkled brows. The sounds of our amateur attempts at communication begin deep inside. Every pause, every silence, every distraction, every truncated sentence is a slowly widening crack in the ceramic bowl that is woefully inadequate to hold our diminishing reality. Language begins in our bodies- our tingling fingers whisper with fear, or nervous excitement. Our nervous eyes and fidgeting limbs are an empty parenthesis. It is important to pay attention to this. Maybe saying it out loud is the first step.
I do not attempt to offer solace, or hope. I’m merely trying to understand.
A few days ago, I started an exercise in found poetry - collecting words to make a box for myself that would hold the time. It will take a lifetime, perhaps. As I read, heard, and squirrelled away some specimens of what felt like humanity, I thought of communication, of the role of language, and speech. I thought of reaching out, of being there, of small talk and deep talk, of meeting and greeting, and of filling the space with words.
We all find different ways of dealing with reality. I am looking for the words, still.
All I have is poetry. And I will persist.
Please take care.
Note: The poem has been translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak & Clare Cavanagh