Lullabye for Wittgenstein
Saturday, 13 June 2009 08:07![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammerWhat can be said, we speak out loud and clear,
Filling the schools and streets with human sound;
About the rest we must be silent, dear.
Our impulse? Just the usual -- a fear
The Cloud of Unknowing cannot be bound.
What can be said, we speak out loud and clear,
To blow by repetition, often and sincere,
The fog away, restating what we've found.
About the rest, we must be silent, dear.
The words are awkward, rumbling, light, austere,
Or sometimes sudden, waiting for the profound:
What can be said, we speak out loud and clear.
Yet sometimes words are echoes to the ear,
A tapping cane with which we map the ground
About the rest. We must be silent, dear,
Before the bank of future knowledge -- here,
Where dragons bark and ignorance surrounds
What can be said. We speak out loud and clear
About the rest. We must. Be silent, dear.
---L.
Filling the schools and streets with human sound;
About the rest we must be silent, dear.
Our impulse? Just the usual -- a fear
The Cloud of Unknowing cannot be bound.
What can be said, we speak out loud and clear,
To blow by repetition, often and sincere,
The fog away, restating what we've found.
About the rest, we must be silent, dear.
The words are awkward, rumbling, light, austere,
Or sometimes sudden, waiting for the profound:
What can be said, we speak out loud and clear.
Yet sometimes words are echoes to the ear,
A tapping cane with which we map the ground
About the rest. We must be silent, dear,
Before the bank of future knowledge -- here,
Where dragons bark and ignorance surrounds
What can be said. We speak out loud and clear
About the rest. We must. Be silent, dear.
—October 2004, July 2005
A villanelle on first and last lines of the Tractatus. Some lines could use a little more work, methinks.---L.
no subject
Date: 24 June 2009 22:49 (UTC)I love the second-to-last stanza.
Sometimes I feel just that: that repetition, sounds, like here in this poem, somehow speak a meaning in us in a deep way that we can't even understand or articulate. So what good does it do us? I don't know; maybe changes how we grow? Maybe none, but utility isn't everything...
Anyway, so maybe your poem does similar--says something, shoots a little something into readers, in a deep way.
I've never read Wittgenstein, though a friend of mine from college--a friend who will visit in a few days, in fact, did, and I remember her talking about him.