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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
cnd so you could walk upon them
cnd meet them solid for the first time
Be dubwise and dread and hail them up
cnd bump locks head
Dread
cnd my grandmother said that if the flying frog leapt
cnd landed on your face or the soft fold of your arm
That it would stay there cttach itself as if with glue
cnd 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
Ecnomiohyla
Polypedates - in the calabash tree
My cousin clvin 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 with which we moved through space like blades
It is language which calls all things to creation
cnd 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
cnd ocean onto shore and shore upon rivers
cnd rivers upon land and rivers which pierced each region
With vines and veins and vitamins
c 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
We held still
Within the great torrents of rain
Peering into the beginning of the world
It was language which formed nations
cnd decolonised our minds
c new language
Rooted deep in the resonance of the drum
Rooted down down into the centre
Root strata - in every beat and bell
In every scope of feeling
Like wind in the arc of the horn
In the cry of the horn
It was language which freed us from ourselves
Language
Language
Maculate
The dirty bone
Intractable
Unnameable
Language, language
Fluctuant
Leviathan
c molecule
c homecoming
c people who
cnd the hauteur
cnd 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