Poetic Tantrum?
By Farah Chamma
“Am I to word all my feelings out?
Make them into these subtle,
incomplete sentences?
Am I to always squeeze them in,
plunder their being from a world
within
only to place them amongst commas
and frail parentheses?
Am I to always mutate them, coerce them, spit them
out, and curse them only for them to become
a form of what is called syntax?”
When one is to deeply think about language, one is to, most probably, find it very perplexing. I have recently been thinking about language A LOT! The thought of it actually gives me a headache more than it gives me anything else. I think about how when we are to express ourselves, we are to express them only through the number of words and expressions we know. Then, I begin to ask myself some questions like:
– What if expressing our feelings and thoughts requires more than these words?
– What if our knowledge of these words only limits our ways of expression?
– What if my understanding of certain words differs, to a significant extent, from your understanding of them?
This post has been inspired by Nizar Qabbani’s “إن الحروف تموت حين تقال” which translates to, “letters die when they are said”.
