Is Wisdom a Lot of Language? by Carl Sandburg
This is from Sandburg’s Honey and Salt. I really like it, especially given how underused language is in everyday life. I often find myself having the same conversations with the same people. Perhaps I should post a “Word of the Day” instead of a PotD, but I think I’ll stick with the poems… P.S. If you haven’t read Ella Minnow Pea: A Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable by Mark Dunn, you should!
Is Wisdom a Lot of Language?
By Carl Sandburg
Apes, may I speak to you a moment?
Chimpanzees, come hither for words.
Orangoutangs, let’s get into a huddle.
Baboons, lemme whisper in your ears.
Gorillas, do yuh hear me hollerin’ to yuh?
And monkeys! monkeys! get this chatter—
For a long time men have plucked letters
Out of the air and shaped syllables.
And out of the syllables came words
And from the words came phrases, clauses.
Sentences were born—and languages.
(The Tower of Babel didn’t work out—
it came down quicker than it went up.)
Misunderstandings followed the languages,
Arguments, epithets, maledictions, curses,
Gossip, backbiting, the buzz of the bazoo,
Chit chat, blah blah, talk just to be talking,
Monologues or members telling other members
How good they are now and were yesterday,
Conversations missing the point,
Dialogues seldom as beautiful as soliloquies,
Seldom as fine as a man alone, a woman by herself
Telling a clock, “I’m a plain damn fool.”
Read the dictionary from A to Izzard today.
Get a vocabulary. Brush up on your diction.
See whether wisdom is just a lot of language.
