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Contests : Tom Howard/John H. Reid Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2007 : Third Prize
TO SING THE WORLD
Each language has its own music
And those who sing it are its harmonic true
From opening bars they recognize each other
They are as staccato to legato
As guttural is to milk
As icebergs from lagoons
They smolder and hiss as fire steams from water
As plucked guitars from tom-toms beating smoke
Consider: a flurry of Italians
Accellerando agitato as spaghetti around spoon to mouth
Ignitable as Latin is to love
And there, a day or two across the water
The dulcet tones of le Français, cedillad and accented
As accordions in the street
Each syllable a mistress, douloureux or sweet
Listen to Greece, her tongue all olive oil and X's
Proud as phrases carved on ancient stones
Bouzoukis lilting linking arms stepping foot after foot
Around breaking plates, while at a wooden table sits
Pythagoras counting his magic numbers
Discoursing on the healing music makes
Consider isiXhosa: fifteen different click sounds
The poetry of ancestors and dreams
Hear the language of night people, phantom figures
They close their eyes, surrender to the music of the stars
Consider translations: often golden words of beauty, works of art
Masterly forged doubloons that subtly miss the mark
True at times to libretto, timbre, image or melody. Never all
Listen to those that cry rivers, raise voices in anger or regret,
Argue in tones of bedlam, discordant and strident as Babel
Each striving to drown out the other
As across the sky a wild goose cries in Esperanto
Flying from tongue to tongue honking from land to land
Aliaj vivoj. We touch their wings, listen
Begin to understand
Each of us has his own music
We swirl with each other, against each other, over our green globe
In choreographies of dissonance and pride
We chant the languages of tribes with cymbals, swords or scimitars
Our words betray us, cascading from a past we cannot hide
Consider the language of flags: each emotion, each devotion,
Each declaration of respect or honor, each hymn an anthem
To divide us
[Consider the music of ants on leaves
The language of grass growing
The sounds of desert winds blowing]
Each language has its magic, its memories
Its palaces and echoing ballrooms
Its secret passageways, its trysts and feuds
Our voices twist and twirl around themselves
Each in its own cadence, temperament, rhythmic beat and break
The music of our world, vowels flowing around continents
Like chocolate snakes
Listening carefully, we discern
Melodies that slip between the words
The music of children playing
The things that whales are saying
The music of old age praying
Cadenza, coda, finalé
This poem won third prize in the 2007 Tom
Howard/John H. Reid Poetry Contest sponsored by Tom Howard Books. Author Johnmichael Simon received a $200 award. Winning Writers assists this contest. Copyright is reserved to the author.
About Johnmichael Simon
I started writing poetry seriously as retirement age arrived. Before that, spaced out over forty years, a handful of verse, perhaps a dozen poems written mostly in moments of anguish. Then I met my life partner, Helen Bar-Lev, an artist, who sparked my creative flame and I began writing furiously. Day-by-day the output mounted and now only four years later I have published two books of poems, Sonatina, largely on musical subjects, and Bordwinot, a mix of ballads, balderdash and other strange ingredients, as well as two books in which Helen and I collaborated: Cyclamens and Swords, poems and illustrations about the land of Israel, and Silly Wishes, an illustrated collection of fun poems for children of all ages. I was honored with several prizes in international competitions: first and third places in the Reuben Rose, first place in the Margaret Reid, third place in the Tom Howard plus numerous honorable mentions in other contests and a whole bunch of appearances in print anthologies and internet publications. For all of which I am deeply grateful to the muse, to my partner, to various editors and judges and to all who have read and enjoyed my poetry.
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