Sewing & Sowing Words

 

We’re artisans who sew and sow words.  We sew and sow words for, among other things, organizing, molding, and embellishing the world in which we’re thrust and thrust ourselves.  Words are powerful tools that must be handled with care.  And, yet, too often when sewing and sowing language:

We sew a word Frankenstein

From new and shoveled parts

With no idea of the line

Of monsters that it starts . . . .

In addition to carelessly sewing and sowing such powerful words, we make another common error.  We forget such powerful words are our tools, that in our relationship with words, we are the masters and words are the servants.  We forget that when words don’t fit the world, we should bend the words and not the world.  In proper frames of mind, we thus laugh at Zeno who was paralyzed by syllables claiming he couldn’t possibly eat, race, or even take off his coat, a parody that bears repeating:

Zeno Phobia

With flawless logic Zeno bowed to proof

He could not eat a meal while it was hot

(Since moving spoons would put spoons where they're not,

A contradiction of such wares).  Aloof

In flawless logic Zeno bowed to proof

He couldn’t win a race however hot

The chase (since endless points on lines cannot

Be crossed as needed to advance).  Aloof

In flawless logic Zeno bowed to proof

He could not doff his cloak when he was hot

(Since it was where it was and thus could not

Be elsewhere, too, in doffing it).  Aloof

In perfect sense and nonsense, he betrayed

The fool who merely did as grammar said.

Remembering we’re masters not servants of words, we thus have no trouble answering the sphynx’s riddle:

   Graffiti on the Sphinx

The Sphinx displayed a riddle on its side:

“They spawn ‘worlds’ including, too, themselves.”

Some answered with “at least two mirrors” while

The lettered Sphinx kept “words” inside itself.

Remembering we’re masters not servants of words (however powerful those words may be), we’re also not duped by those who claim their “natural” should be ours as well:

   Arden

The “natural” opposes nature.  It

Would change the thing itself, tame the untame

And hitch some substitute up to a name.

Ineffable, things in themselves won’t fit

With any words though “natural” would try.

Where Arden keeps her sanctuary, I

Withdraw with Dukes and Rosalinds, with Jaques,

And Ennises, beyond false prophets, hacks,

Prudes, bigots and all other perverts who

Use “natural” to “measure” what they do.

Remembering we’re masters not servants of words, we also won’t let self-proclaimed “moral leaders” mislead us with words (however powerful) that won’t stand the test of experience:

    False Preachers in Their Wilderness of Guilt

Their dictionaries tell them that midday

Lies equidistant from sunrise, sunset

No matter length of day.  Their alphabet

Requires the sun to rise and set each day.

As noon carves days into their equal halves,

Word preachers in their wilderness of guilt

Condemn with certainty that certain tilt

And inclination terra firma has

To thrust its pole in un-straight solstice wards

That raise the sun by dropping it, that force

Opposing acts at once and thus of course

Unravel scripture by unraveling words.

“That cannot be!”  The word-wound preacher says.

“There’s sin in arctic winter solstices!”

Remembering we’re masters not servants of words, we will not let self-proclaimed “moral leaders” remake themselves with words that won’t stand the test of experience:

   A False Preacher after Picking Pears

Much like Augustine, he’d misspent his youth

Whose remnants left a slimy, snail-like trail

Of failed employment and debauchery

That marked the way to categories that

Entombed him under shameful epitaphs.

Though boxed in darkness there invisible,

He saw the light, rolled back the heavy stone

And re-emerged by force of words alone.

He married, started preaching, and thereby

Could do no wrong in God’s own language. Thus

Self-wrapped in righteous trappings, he had purged

Himself.  He found men paid him for it, too,

As well they should: by definition price

Is fair in open markets of advice.

Remembering we’re masters not servants of words, we can thus reject narrow Tertullian types (who think their philosophies have all the answers) and embrace instead broader Justin Martyr types (who agree that there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in any one philosophy):

Tertullian’s Sonnet

Why think of Athens?  What has it to do

With God’s Jerusalem?  I would refrain

From mixing categories.  I’d retain

Clear thinking, would not mix up “Greek” and “Jew”

As I would never jumble up the “snow”

With “rain” or “moon” with “sun.”  I would be true

To God and his Creation, never skew

The Earth and Heavens.  Thus, I suffered no

Theologies that threatened to distract

Us from the Lord, was careful to dispel

The pagan, segregate him safe in Hell.

I never let words bind God or subtract

From him--credo quia absurdum est.

I would be judged as well by such a test.

            Justin Martyr’s Sonnet

A single Cyclops’ socket in the head

Would lack the depth-perception needed for

Good images of truth.  God added thus

A Christian eye to complement the Greek

Which means of course that God would not condemn

The virtuous pagan--doing so would pluck

The pagan eye reducing once again

Perception and our image of the truth.

It follows thus that Heaven must have shared

A Christian eye with Plato who now sees

With clarity at last the Form of Good.

The same must follow for all ancients who

Had virtue prior to the birth of Christ--

No calendar confines God’s sacrifice.

Remembering we’re masters not servants of words (however powerful they may be), all is thus fit for question.  We can, for example, even take time to question “time”:

   Time’s Sonnet

The conjugations of “good” grammars have

Time flowing from the past.  Yet, words allow

Diversity of current.  We say, too,

That time flows back from future days:

“The future is unfolding as we speak.”

Or does time just swirl round in circles so

Poor Judas hangs himself repeatedly?

Don’t currents cross?  But how? Must they not freeze

Since “current” cannot move beyond the “now”

And yet be current?  Yet it moves?  Time both

Conveys the ship and clock it threatens, too,

With icebergs of itself within itself?

Or does time just swirl round in circles so

Poor Judas hangs himself repeatedly?

In further questioning “time” as masters and not servants of words (however powerful those words may be), we thus know it’s never too late to embrace life even in life’s very last moments:

   Alive At Last

He’d feared he’d stopped too late

To conjugate “to be”

In life’s right grammar--right

Inflexions on the tongue

Had somehow not expressed

The reference.  Though am

That’s mirrored in the breath

That’s mastered early kept

A present orbit, too,

Somehow he’d foundered with

That heavier reference words

But modeled in the air,

Had long mixed am beyond

The bounds of sense into

The morrow, little marked

The nonce that limed the self,

Had lived not for today

But for tomorrow.  Old,

Yet physically still in

The present, now he had

Found morrow never holds

A beating heart.  Illumed,

He’d not lament the loss

On balance of his life.

Regret would transpose, too,

The tenses and espouse

The airy then for now,

Slip his gold wedding ring

On former clock hands whose

Now vacant substance would

Drop bands, recalling thus

Some meter he once read

Etched on a tilting wall:

“Twelve Lines Of A Poor Bard

On Loving What Is Barred.

The hand that’s not, next hour’s,

Is never now’s or ours.

Embrace the moment.  Seize

Its hand, the one one sees,

And ring it, tie the knot.

Fools pine for what is not.

The morrow ducks the here

And now the live can’t hear

Or see past.  No gold band

Fits shadow fingers banned

From present altars.  Air

Would be their only heir.”

Remembering we’re masters not servants of words (however powerful those words may be), we shout:

Abominable of all abominables!

It’s worse than any butchery with a knife

When unfit words disfigure any life

Remolding it to fit mere syllables!

Remembering we’re masters and not servants of words, we remind ourselves once more that we can embrace life even if we have waited until life’s very last moments.  As long as life exists, words need not keep us from it.  Instead, words should help us find our true lives and purposes and hold them close.  Again:

Embrace the moment.  Seize

Its hand, the one one sees,

And ring it, tie the knot--

Fools pine for what is not!

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016