[Newspoetry] Language dies

[Donald L Emerick]

Requiem for a War; On, Language; Out of My Way

Oh, the words used at the death of a language 
might well have been spoken of any old death.
There, there, don’t cry so much, sweet Charlotte,
you know that she lived a long and full life,
full of bitter and sweet memories of songs,
for she truly had seen all that life had to offer,
taken all that life had to give and given it her all.
She was ready to die; she looked forward to it;
she was going home to meet her Maker, by and by,
and looked up to speaking in her own life eternal.

When a language dies, an ever early death,
its passing goes unsung in its native tongue;
though its sons and daughters stand nearby,
they trade family gossip, how well each fares,
how some fail, in endearing flaws known well,
and  who has it made in money, fame, or power.

A language dies when it casts its reputations
As things that may not be sullied nor sacrificed.
They wouldn’t let me speak in London or Paris,
nor yet could I be heard in rush trafficked streets
of New York or Chicago, in angloidiomatic chat
that passes on its emptiness as things American do,
with nothing much to say, but ever too much to do.

A language dies to make room in a dark forest
for small seedlings wanting their turn at the top.
All languages look much alike, until they drop
their needles, leaves, to carpet the forest floor,
and stand before us, naked skeletons for an eye
to see beauty is born boned-deep in symmetry.

A language dies when its repetitions triumph
so completely that nothing else could dare try
to rise over mires of momentary night and day.
Every speaking then becomes an instant replay,
an instant reply from a pre-recorded archive
of well regarded sentiments sanitized by time
echoing its own times, pacing hollow foot steps
that trace out the passages in hallowed halls,
walking on dry woods between hollow walls.

A language dies a lonely death but once only,
having lost its touted ability to speak novelly,
to speak outrageously, to speak its nonsense
ever freshly, as a bind against common takes
in the elliptical dialog of waiting stage hands,
where clarity wears its gowns in thin instinct,
as a common prudery against its own nudery,
and grunts its tired echoes of bodily operations
we might do well to never hear nor ever recall.