Speaking with hands
by Nicholas Messenger
[ poetry - november 08 ]
I got out of bed this morning thinking about blind men's fingers
scurrying across pages, speaking for them.
And the Morse telegraphists, their fingers flickering on the key-pad
recognising one-another's voices.
And the dance of semaphore which, since it is a speech of bodies,
brings it home that it is all the man that speaks
when we are speaking. And the other fleeting ways we have of talking
as our thoughts go darting through the space that links us.
In a lifetime we have so much time for thinking
and our minds have so much space in,
whether the complexity of a city, or of a jungle long-house, keeps us;
and whether our tongues are racing along a river-bed of syllables,
or our hands and eyes are moulding thoughts
as if the opaque air was clay.
I end up being envious of anybody's fluency;
for instance, if he plays a game like chess until he thinks in it,
or music is vocabulary, grammar and the rhetoric of his intelligence.
It may be only that we woke up talking about distinctions
between 'touch' and 'feel'; 'stroke', 'fondle' and 'caress';
such as: To feel is to seek pleasure; a caress is speech.
