“All you can offer anyone suffering in the world is a sentence,
which is more often than not not enough” — of course, of course
this is true, but still it wrenches my gut every time, a rusted punch
right where it hurts. My mind is a strange ocean, and the more I learn
the deeper I swim. Language is the deep blue water I travel in:
there is no way of escaping it. This much I have learnt. My debts
to the world shall be paid in an economy of words, with sentences
I will build like monuments. It is all I have to my name, to my self.
The words create whole landscapes, and it is where I always return
to search for that most elusive dream in a human life: meaning.
The words are all I have to understand my small body and this
vast world, they are all I can offer to the small gods in prayer.
I want the words I write to be the shining lights of a harbour
for a stranger’s faltering boat, I want the words to carry me, to
save a drowning lover. The sentences I carve should be some kind
of solace, should be lamps of comfort for somebody, somewhere.
I have nothing else to give of myself but these strings of words.
O poet, do not tell me about my predestined failure in your words
sharpened like swords, do not reveal my helplessness to me
in the very language of my hope.
which is more often than not not enough” — of course, of course
this is true, but still it wrenches my gut every time, a rusted punch
right where it hurts. My mind is a strange ocean, and the more I learn
the deeper I swim. Language is the deep blue water I travel in:
there is no way of escaping it. This much I have learnt. My debts
to the world shall be paid in an economy of words, with sentences
I will build like monuments. It is all I have to my name, to my self.
The words create whole landscapes, and it is where I always return
to search for that most elusive dream in a human life: meaning.
The words are all I have to understand my small body and this
vast world, they are all I can offer to the small gods in prayer.
I want the words I write to be the shining lights of a harbour
for a stranger’s faltering boat, I want the words to carry me, to
save a drowning lover. The sentences I carve should be some kind
of solace, should be lamps of comfort for somebody, somewhere.
I have nothing else to give of myself but these strings of words.
O poet, do not tell me about my predestined failure in your words
sharpened like swords, do not reveal my helplessness to me
in the very language of my hope.