Poem: The Sorrows of Speech

The sorrows of speech

Our communication is to talk,
we speak with our mind,
to praise or mock,
to exact a line.

Our hearts are tightly bound,
locked within their cages,
deep, hidden is their sound,
others unfelt of our rages.

For passion nor thought,
is conveyed by tongue,
as truth is callously wrought,
and whimsically swung.

Emotions can change,
at a passionate speech,
but the silence seems strange,
for the heart hath no reach.

My heart speaks through my eyes,
silently gazing forth,
for within there are no lies,
at my mind’s hearth.

My speech and my voice,
disregarded as noise,
my melancholic silence,
perceived as shyness,

For as we walk on,
through the halls of life,
we do so on our own,
ploughing through strife.

Words are but sounds,
interpreted in their own way,
but to understand or confound,
it’s all how you’d say.

I cannot speak truth,
for it shall look false,
My pain has a root,
grown of speech’s faults.

So I plunge the key inside,
and further lock my heart,
and my speech died,
Before my lips could part.

-Adithyaa Raghavan

 

I wrote this on Friday, when I was feeling particularly melancholic about how speech feels rather insufficient for communication. If you are skilled with talking, you can easily change the listener’s emotions if they get drawn into what you say. However, while speech can change emotion, it doesn’t contain it. Your exact feelings, thoughts, perceptions, and very emotions are influenced by your entire life, the singular unique existence you have led compared to every organism that has ever lived on this country. Your emotion, your reaction to your emotion, and how the emotion makes you feel is not the same for everyone else. We cannot clone its effect to another. However close we can get to another, our hearts and minds cannot communicate as one except through our speech and silence.I have another poem that reflects this solitary existence of the self, but that is for another day.

Thank you and have a nice week,

Signing off,

~Adithyaa