Language (Poem for Anthony McNeill)

Something about how we have names for everything now

How each leaf has its place at the shaded side of the river

The dark dirt under the cocoa onion has a name

For that kind of soil

The soft cup of scales forming the echeveria has a name, the way it folds

The filament in the light of the firefly - the wick, the tail

Has a name - luciferin, in the production of light

Water in the knee and it has a name - meniscus - effusion

Which is really a form of liquid textology

Dividing the meat into chunk and gill

Once, there were still unseen places and things

Corners of experience which had no name

And so you could walk upon them and

Meet them solid for the first time and be

Dubwise and dread and hail them up and

Bump locks head

Dread

And my grandmother said that if the flying frog leapt

And landed on your face or the soft fold of your arm

That it would stay there

Attach itself as if with glue, and you would have to iron or steam steel, heat

Impress upon the frog-back skin till it stick to the stainless heat

Until it release, an' peel off

We returned from country visits, from visiting kin in churches

Hid in bush to find flying frogs perched in corners of the house

Trapped in their silence of peace, I never saw their leap

But I seen what hurricanes could do to islands

I seen it on TV and it had a name

Nigropalmatus

Hylidae

Rhacophorus, fringe-limbed or marvellous

Ecno-ecnomio-ecniomiohy-oio-ecnomio-ecniomiohyhyla

Polypedates, in the calabash tree

My cousin Alvin

And the hillside where bananas are grown from seed

This place has a dance, and it has a name

Even vinegar has a seed

We were wild, we were wild children

We had names, we had names with which we moved

With which we moved through space

Moved through space like blades

Yeah

Yeah

Woo

Yeah

It is language which calls all things to creation

And language is the origin of the world

The word

Was the great mass of a black star exploding

It was the beat of a drum

The vibration of the body

Was to bear the boom, the thrust into breath, and breath

Into fire, and fire into rain, and rain onto ocean

And ocean onto shore, and shore upon rivers

And rivers upon land, and rivers which pierced each region

With veins and vines and vitamins

A great storm was coming

The earth would shake

It would tumble, it would break

Each flash of lightning was a blade flung against temptation

But our little house would withstand it all

It would not fail, it would not fall

Language

Language

Language

Language, language, language

Language, language, language

Language

Yeah, uh

We held still

Within the great torrents of rain

Peering into the beginning of the world

It was language which formed nations

And decolonised our minds

A new language

Rooted deep in the resonance of the drum

Rooted down down into the very centre

Root strata, in every beat and bell

In every scope of feeling

Like wind

Like wind in the arc of the horn

In the cry of the horn

It was language which freed us from ourselves

Language

Language

Language

Language, language, language

Yeah, yeah

Yeah

Woo

Come on

Yeah

Yeah

Maculate

The dirty bone

Oh, yeah

Intractable

Uh, unnameable

Uh, language, language

Fluctuant

Uh, come on

Leviathan

A molecule

A homecoming

A people who

And the hauteur

And the halter back of cousin Maria, 1978, 1982

The brightness of the image remaining in the photograph

Space

The interstice of loss

Between canvas and paint

Uh