Nemo in Slumberland
What came before language?
the darkness before the breath upon the water.
I knew something, I’m sure
a truth before descriptive paragraphs,
a color before colors had names.
The mind is a captive animal.
Domesticated might say it better:
out of the elements
kept lazy by easy food
still killing maybe nine birds a year.
Here we have our garden rows
Names and numbers, lists and poems.
all the things we tell our dogs
and the songs we use to pull together
as the wind catches our sails.
We keep account in Linear B
we surface dwellers
Blind and blinding
Nemo in Slumberland
Posted Sep 17, 2019, 10:35 PM UTC · edited
11
I love this. There’s an often overlooked philosophy that is succinctly captured by the opening line of “what came before language?” That immediately had me hooked. You further elaborated on that philosophy when you proposed “a color before colors had names” in line 5.
I only wish that you had gone further with this philosophy, but I also enjoyed how you turned the subject to the idea of humans being like dogs in their dogmatic tendency to conform to pre-established concepts that had no bearing on the physical world prior. This piece makes me think deeply, and I feel that you have achieved your goal of placing forth a proposal without sounding too high browed.