Word Made Flesh

Mask of Lincoln
Workshop
Daniel Chester French



 Word Made

Flesh

 

But erasing does not stop with new

language, and that my friend, is my sorrow . . .

 

                                    Yiyun Li

                                    Dear Friend,  from My Life

                                                I Write to You in Your Life

 

I wonder if after having been

gagged or not being able to or allowed

 

to speak

 

once the cloth is unknotted at the back

of the head and allowed to fall into

 

one’s open hands the words trapped there

would eventually be decipher

 

able, again translate-

 

able, and if the one bringing them back

to life, returning them to their air and sound

 

                                    and gurgle and bubble

 

and syllable will it be enough to equal

a word voiced, is it enough to hear them stir &

 

                                    limp around

 

reacclimating?  The words I mean.  The now illicit

ones.  How they pitch their bearings into significance

 

                                    and wind.  Adapt. 

 

Fall almost down.  Bleed their edemas and embolisms.

See the fluids fill the outer edges

 

                                    of their every extremity

 

 

in their tincture of cinnabar, see them wind

the clock and raise the dead on their own

 

                                    third day

 

and reach out to breathe

with fingertips like the way the blind read

 

                                    this word again made flesh

 

against the now ungagged lips

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