Tower of Babel

Written and read by TheRavenOfPoe

Tower of Babel

I was born with a tongue and mind
Like any other little child
But neither was of use to me
Until that gift set both wild.

You, my fellow human beings,
Gave that gift to me.
You spoke and spake, and talked and ached
And thus you set me free.

I learned each thing had a name
And thus I learned abstraction,
And soon enough I could speak
To incite any desired reaction.

But soon enough I discovered
That the very thing that set me free
Was now a cage around my mind
Dictating how things seemed to me.

I felt things with an English heart,
I heard things with English ears,
I saw things with my English eyes
So again arose my fears.

My fear of living in a cage
With walls all made the same,
And being trapped in a place
Where I was just one name.

I wished for a new perspective
A new way of witnessing the world
And so I took up a new tongue
And so my cage unfurled.

With each new delicious word,
An idea was unchained, freed
Within my unilingual soul
...Tower of Babel indeed!

Copyright © 2009

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• tower
• of
• babel
• poem
• poetry
• language
• languages
• learning
• bilingual
• multilingual

[maximkazhenkov11]

spake?



[TheRavenOfPoe]

@maximkazhenkov11 An outdated past tense form of 'speak' - hoping to bring it back, hehe.. :)

[nohonor89]

What a powerful and articulate tribute to language. You have nice eyes, too.

[TheRavenOfPoe]

@nohonor89 Thank you! :)

[DramaDon83]

You are so lovely....and so dramatic..some say they dont need drama in their lives...I say..without drama, life is so boring!...

[TheRavenOfPoe]

@DramaDon83 Thank you :)

[MrRobokoper]

@TheRavenOfPoe You are Satanist?

[anonymousborn]

nice you wrote

[TheRavenOfPoe]

@clayLavl thank you :)