Length

 Sentence in italics: Virginia Woolf, ‘Orlando’, page 275  

 

The true length of a person’s life, whatever

the stretching minutes, the landmark days

the hearsay of the workday week

the limited counting of due seasons, whatever

the Dictionary of National Biography may say

its anecdotes ballooning out of shape

its genealogies taking up space

when or if it mentions one at all

is always a matter of dispute

while speaking words that predate English

hearing songs only birds can make

seeing in one glance millennia nightly

sensing another as here now and for always

praying where peace passes all understanding.

Usage

 

As Inglese burgeons into insurmountable clouds

of cut and paste and blah and slop accumulated -

wordiness without genesis or revelation,

separated from the tongues that made words live -

English yet continues its normal pick and choose

in the regular plays of everyday use and notice.

Swish and lush and blunt its ways, Always Immediate,

needful and inventive and Apposite Instantly

the language of tireless folk like you and I

wanting the right verb, as we step from here to there

serving up the complementary pun or compliment,

self-possessed with our own meanings, Ageless Idioms,

private and peculiar, public and purposeful

as words will do, as only certain words will do.

 

Beyond

 Letrilla: All of Which is Beyond Words

i.m Simon Carey Holt, author of ‘Eating Heaven’

 

You and how you talk at table

Speaking of the unspeakable

Together of the present day

Blessed givens and come-what-mays

All of which is beyond words

 

Then on message capable

Messaging the unmissable

Here there nearly everywhere share

Now the news now contempt now care

None of which is beyond words

 

Opinions faster faster

Complex like your bowl of pasta

Situations vast and vaster

One solved the next a disaster

All of which is beyond words

 

Politicians you could throttle

Contents not on the sauce bottle

When this moment calls for cool heads

You hear and say what must be said

None of which is beyond words

 

Tables are level playing fields

Where cases each can be appealed

Things never heard before the Law

You speak at length not one ignore

All of which are beyond words

 

Ice cream softens the argument

The sweet intent of what you meant

Verdicts postponed hatchets buried

When life is a bowl of cherries

None of which is beyond words

 

By tomorrow other stories

Implausible morning glories

Some homely some matters of State

The table awaits your updates

All of which is beyond words