Industry of Words

 

Watching an Indian quiz program
and then a Chinese talk show,
I could hardly hear words, only
sounds—all right, syllables,
but they’d just get repeated,
no sense at all to a Tagalog
who could make better sense
of "bababa ka ba?" Question:

could we look as mere insects
to laughing aliens from a galaxy?
Could ants actually be speaking
a most specific set of vocabulary?
Then it occured to me—language
was not meant to be universal!
The Tower of Babel collapsed
to keep men secular, provincial!
So wars will go on, animals
slaughtered as food, linguists
keep their jobs, ambassadors
their posts, cartoonists their
personifications, economists
exploit nations, poems evade
translators, art films retain
glamor with subtitles. And so
weird quizzes & talk shows go
on as cable television’s charming,
most profitable channel additions.

 

 

---November 4-6, 2002

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2004 Vicente-Ignacio Soria de Veyra. All rights reserved. Readers are welcome to view, save, file and print out single copies of this webpage for their personal use. No reproduction, display, performance, multiple copy, transmission, or distribution of the work herein, or any excerpt, adaptation, abridgment or translation of same, may be made without written permission from the author. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this work will be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

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