Voces paginarum*
The words speak
to me
they leap
up and dance and
then
so do I.
SIT DOWN!
the teacher says.
READ SILENTLY:
DON’T MOVE YOUR LIPS.
READ TO YOURSELF.
(Shouting words,
but
Not for us
a loud clamour and
exclamation
no declamation
no exultation
nor excessive
incantation vocal
ornamentation
no
voices in the head
no
voices not your
own may pass
your
lips
no
)
KEEP your voice DOWN
(a lady does not shout nor
a gentleman)
(then why when I look
do I see so many
shouting?)
We are not like them those others
who tooth and taste their words
or yours
KEEP your WORDS in your mouth.
KEEP them scrubbed.
Don’t meddle or mix
promiscuously
with other idioms
(lenguas, langues,
zungas)
KEEP YOUR TONGUE IN
YOUR MOUTH
lest those others
(les infectes) you
Stray not with
strange sounds and scents or
savours
Neither dance nor sing nor
poietes be;
don’t
heap up your words:
cinoti,
(I dare you
read that word
quickly
aloud)
in Sanskrit or
any other spraak of
taal
(LEAVE SOME SPACE
lest
MARK MY WORDS
YOU)
not without a little
red*
can
never get
clene
again.
Notes on words
*voces paginarum
(Latin: voices of the page, or reading
(calling out) as it was practiced, for example, in the early middle ages in
Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
For Augustine, for example, a text was meant to be followed with the
lips, as much as with the eyes. In reading (from Middle English reden and Old High German rattan, to advise), one literally delivers
or gives voice to and performs the assemblies
noted in the text. Or as Tim
Ingold puts it, “the poetic text is…at once script and score” (Lines, 12). But today, in school, we are taught that reading thus is bad
form; unless we are performing or reading aloud to others to whisper or mouth
the words we sight when we “read to ourselves” isn’t done. The contemporary rule is clear: “read
with your eyes, not your mouth”; shut up those words inside yourself, don’t mix
insides and outsides; don’t get confused.
Lengua (Spanish:
tongue, language)
Langue (French:
tongue, language)
Zumba (Old High
German: tongue)
Les infectes (French:
infected persons; detritus; those who don’t count)
Cinoti from the
Sanskrit, meaning to heap up; thought to be related to the Greek verb. poiein, to make, produce or create
(poetry and other works of art).
Poietes (Ancient
Greek: poet, maker, creator)
spraak of taal (Dutch:
speech (tongue) or tongue (speech))
* “not without a little red” Artaud, writing of the English
poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, argues that poiesis
does not happen without “a little red blood.” Here he is making a playful—poetic—link between the
expediture of a life lived for poetry and a blood price—poine in ancient Greek, poena
in Latin. The difference one
letter makes is at once nothing and everything.
Clene is middle
English for what is free from dirt or pollution (but the word clean, in English
ultimately comes to us from the Old High German kleini, delicate, dainty, which is thought to be derived from the
Greek glainoi, ornaments. Clean is
thus never quite properly purged of elements not itself, never unadulterated;
never pure.)
Notes on photographs
I took these photos of intertidal creatures in August 2012 on Hakai Beach, on the west coast of Calvert Island, in Central British Columbia.
The purple and orange starfish are variants of the species Piaster ochraceus, a keystone species on the northwest coast of the Americas. Predators of common mussels, they prevent overgrowth in mussel beds, and thus help to maintain species diversification on northwest Pacific shores.
The green tubes are a species of anenome known as aggregating or clonal anenomes. These creatures may reproduce sexually (two gametes fuse in the water and then settle on a rock) or asexually, by fission, which permits the anenomes to form vast clonal carpets consisting of a single genetic variant that lives as a colony, and is hostile to other colonies. The green colour of these anenomes is supplied by symbiotic algae that live within the cells of the host animal, and contribute to the primary productivity of the intertidal zone. The lessons of such visually noisy interdependence shouldn't be lost on us.
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