Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

Julia Castertonand Chris Nawrat

print this page

The Tower

I memorised a thousand sacred poems
and then forgot them

entered a walled garden,
made it a desert.

Prayed. Begged the voice to come.
‘I have done without food,

without honey or milk.
I am waiting.

Only say the word.’
The voice came.

‘The language of grace
lies hidden. Only accidence

can find it. Fasting is no use,
nor is excess.

There are some words
for whom the molecules of the air move

in the same dance
they dance for the thing that stands there.

House. Perhaps the air dances around that word
just as it dances round the house itself

Or it may not be house.
Perhaps it is house in another language
that makes the dance. Or perhaps

that language is not yet spoken. Or heard.
There were towns where the people could not travel

without first learning another tongue.
The language of confusion had overgrown

what remained
of the language of grace.

But children, moving between the towns,
began to speak in their own words

in no language at all
in the simplex that lies

beneath the tower of contention.
When you discover those towns

be silent. Listen to children
travelling from place to place.

Listen to what they do not yet
know how to say. Perhaps the word

is beginning . Or ending
I can’t be sure. I have forgotten.

Perhaps, words are only there for comfort
and the rest is nothing, only bliss.

And words exist for when
we cannot hear the bliss.’

 


Footnote: Julia says ‘I was reading about the Tower of Babel, and started to wonder how much we can understand without words. Then Desmond Sequiera told me a story about his childhood in India, in a place where every village has a different language. He said that, to overcome this, the children from the different villages made up their own language.’

 

Page(s) 18-19

Back to top