On The Cost of Written Language - Arthur Dawson

[Larry Robinson]

On The Cost of Written Language

Once upon a time
we knew the dancers inside water,
could name each one
by her seven names.
We knew the alphabet
of red sea stars, deer tracks
in the mud and the curl of Scorpio
in the August night.

By what magic
did such spirit turn to silence?
what convinced us
to trade ears for eyes,
fluid thoughts
for scratches of ink,
summer voices
for black forests bounded
by rectangular horizons?
What insect has eaten the green leaves,
while the newspaper
spreads its daily silence,
pages falling softy like snow,
with a muffled hiss?

Fascinated we gaze
endlessly into this mirror we’ve made,
reflections struggling for breath
beneath the surface, hiding like coral
inside the calcified skeletons
of our ancestors?

	- Arthur Dawson