Poetry Monday: Losing A Language

Losing A Language

A breath leaves the sentences and does not come back
yet the old remember something they could say

but they know now that such things are no longer believed
and the young have fewer words

many of the things the words were about
no longer exist

the noun for standing in mist by a haunted tree
the verb for I

the children will not repeat
the phrases their parents speak

somebody has persuaded them
that it is better to say everything differently

so that they can be admired somewhere
farther and farther away

where nothing that is here is known
we have little to say to each other

we are wrong and dark
in the eyes of the new owners

the radio is incomprehensible
the day is glass

when there is a voice at the door it is foreign
everywhere instead of a name there is a lie

nobody has seen it happening
nobody remembers

this is what words were made
to prophesy

here are the extinct feathers
here is the rain we saw

--W.S. Merwin

In one way this is a poem about the literal loss of a Native language. Human languages are dying all over the world--currently estimated at two a month.  Living in Hawaii, W.S. Merwin was especially concerned with Native Hawaiians.  He is interviewed in this documentary series called Language Matters which focuses on Indigenous Hawaiian language, and the people who are working to keep it alive. One of them is Arlene W. Eaton, the elder in the picture above the poem, a Native Hawaiian speaker who was forced to speak only English in boarding school.  For older generations of Native people throughout North America in particular, this is a familiar story.

But this poem can also be read as a testament by any elder in today's fast-changing world, when words of the past or their relevance, even in the dominant language, are disappearing.  It is harder to communicate any accumulated knowledge, especially about change over time.  It is harder to be heard, especially when few listen, and all that knowledge in those words is lost as well.  The loss of a language--literally or metaphorically--detracts from the world, and adds to its loneliness.