The Labor of Language's Long Wander
Brandon Cook
I.
The murder of ravens on the green hill got me thinking what other groups should be called
An awkwardness of teenagers, perhaps, or
A wilderness of stars, or
A gossiping of trees
A murmuring of breezes
As the great, gray highway lifted me beneath the conspiracy of mountains
I had a moment of marvel as the absurdity hit me,
Of language—
That we should make sounds to name a spoon or the moon, or loneliness, or emptiness
And they’re all so different the world around, so many sounds,
Which is proof: many approaches to a mountain, but the mountain remains aloof
II.
The endlessness of mapping starts, perhaps, with a false promise: that we can put words to everything
First, objects concrete and sure, as if the work will be a cinch
Until the gradient increases, inch by inch
We name finer things, then, like forgiveness,
Labeling the ability to move our souls into release, into letting go, into peace
That this is so human a thing we need a name for it—
What strange reality
But soon, language evaporates before our eyes, into ideas and abstractions which can feel like lies
Until all our longing becomes too fine to put any point on it,
A mist always eluding the mind, leaving us only hearts, beguiled, betrayed
As we grasp, in fits and starts—blind hands grasping through a maze—
To name things too pure for us to talk about
As sailors wrestling with a wave cannot comprehend the depth on every side, the vast sea and sky
III.
The brood of desire, untamed, we fine at last will not be named
As damned language, dearest friend, fails us,
Inviting only our love and pity as its shrugs and almost smiles, straining, as we all might when we find at last our limits, and knowing it’s just pretending to keep on trying
Unable to lift any more the avalanche of rock under which we know, somehow, our salvation lies, if we could but name things rightly
To name is to wander and wonder no longer, but, since it is our lot:
May we come to love the void, and not to curse the unfound shore
And embrace instead the endless exploring
As in a great labyrinth
Through which our wild, long-bearded souls shamble
Under a great wilderness of stars
A conspiracy of mountains
A longing of hearts