We need words to name our world. Yet, over and over, words fail to express the inexpressible.

Dana Gioia's poem, "Words," begins, "The world does not need words. It articulates itself / in sunlight, leaves, and shadows." True enough - but only partly true (as Gioia's poem itself acknowledges.) His poem prompted me to write the following response.*

The world does not need words, but I do,

for reasons both mysterious and plain.

I need the firm and solid sound of "thud,"

the sharp edge of "click" and the sibilance of "whisper."

I need words like "whoosh," and "zip," and "splinter"

to savor and enjoy.

The world does not need words, but we do:

Being human, we need words for

gluttony and greed, for anger, fraud, and lust.

To name is to know and to remember -

at least until the next time we forget.

The world does not need words, but we do:

Words like truth and beauty, fear and wonder,

glory, grace and gratitude. We need these words

to find our place in the world that does not need words,

that articulates itself in sunlight, leaves and shadows,

but we, limited as we are, articulate ourselves

only through sentences and through song.    

To be sure, as Patrick Gilger suggests in the passage quoted to the left, there are times when all our words are only vain efforts to "drape the white sheet of language over ... emptiness." Still, we need to know, to name and to remember. To probe at the edges of mystery for whatever sense we can grasp.        

Words are often the best tools at hand. (Although words are not the only symbols in the human repertoire of knowing.) Sound and silence, sentence and song, the cadences of language lead us toward, and at least part-way into, the mysteries of meaning.

                                                        -- Bill

* Phrases in italics are taken from Gioia's poem.