“All these words…”: Found poetry about Chinuk Wawa
My readers know that I share Chinuk Wawa-related poetry sometimes, and much of it is awful, so here’s a lovely change of pace.
Found in the margin of a page of Jargon vocabulary written 111 years ago, I found the author’s comment about the mental associations the language held for him touching.
I imagine anyone who’s ever “lost” a language can identify with what Paul Gard writes:
All these
words,
after I have
not heard
any of them
for
3 long years
are
buried alive
in
my memory
&
in my heart.
Like a lover’s
song
they bring
to my senses
the places,
the things
&
the persons they
represent –
I could under
every one of
them
sketch some
landscape
or
some picture –
“Honny soit”
“qui”
“mal y pense!”’