The world has more languages

[PrinceMyshkin]

A seminar of pigeons
flock nearby, discoursing.
They have their language and I
have mine, though mine is, no doubt,
gibberish to them.

The world has more languages
than there are ways to say
“I love you” in any one.

[Delta40]

I like the seminar of pigeons image.

as per usual, there is an aspect of your poetry which eludes me.

The world has more languages
than there are ways to say
“I love you” in any one.

In counting the world's language, I find there are by far more spoken than there are ways to say 'I love you' in a single one. Gosh I had to think that one out and on a Sunday morning too! You just broadened the horizon once more Prince

[PrinceMyshkin]

I like the seminar of pigeons image.

as per usual, there is an aspect of your poetry which eludes me.

The world has more languages
than there are ways to say
“I love you” in any one.

In counting the world's language, I find there are by far more spoken than there are ways to say 'I love you' in a single one. Gosh I had to think that one out and on a Sunday morning too! You just broadened the horizon once more Prince

May I be frank with you, Delta? Just between the two of us, I didn't know exactly what this meant when I finished it. It began with that image you like. I didn't know where it came from or what it meant, but there was enough something in it - goofiness, maybe - for me to want to continue.

It felt right to me when I'd completed it, though I still didn't know for sure what the aitch it mean. I think I've figured it out since, but would rather wait and see what if anything others read into or out of it. Thanks for your comment, the first after today's kerfuffle over posting.

[hillwalker]

Pigeons to the language(s) of love.....

I enjoyed the leap from one single, haphazard observation to a thought-provoking discourse on communication.

I suppose saying 'I love you' using words, body language, behaviour and emotional contact is really all the one way. When you commit yourself to saying those 3 words you say it all the ways it can be said.

H

[PrinceMyshkin]

Pigeons to the language(s) of love.....

I enjoyed the leap from one single, haphazard observation to a thought-provoking discourse on communication.

I suppose saying 'I love you' using words, body language, behaviour and emotional contact is really all the one way. When you commit yourself to saying those 3 words you say it all the ways it can be said.

H

Thanks. Hillwalker.

[blank|verse]

Well, it's hard to read this objectively now you've admitted you didn't know what the last stanza meant, Prince... but to be honest, I was scratching my head to work out a connection, or what it amounted to.

I really enjoyed the first stanza with its metaphorical transformation of the pigeons into more intelligent, sentient beings than they are usually given credit for. I would have liked for this part to have been developed.

But, as in other of your poems, you seem to grasp for some meaning behind your observations. And suddenly dragging love into the poem seems a bit desperate, to be honest. Isn't that the curse of (post)modern society - that we know things add up to nothing? Keats would not be impressed by your lack of negative capability! :)

[Lumiere]

I, too, liked the formality of the language used about pigeons juxtaposed with our "gibberish".

This poem - and when I talk about this poem I'm effectively talking all Prince-poems - is puzzling and provocative; I can't quite understand the last stanza, at least not in a way that would allow me to regurgitate its meaning in words; (there are other ways of understanding, though, and some of them more complete; in fact, when the creator can't entirely understand the creation, I tend to think it is maybe because it's too true); but understanding feels close enough that it's not purely frustrating.

This balance I so enjoy.

[dafydd manton]

Would we recognise those three vital words that keep humanity going, if we did not know the language? Do pigeons say it? Does it matter, provided that the one you love understands what you said, not how you said it? If the only woman I loved said that she felt the same way about me, albeit in a language that I don't know, would I realise it? I hope so.. Good questions, though. Thanks, Prince.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Thanks B|V, Lumiere & Dafy.

The whole of this was written on intuition and though I didn't immediately understand it, I came to see the subtext: the narrator, whom we may assume to be alone at the time, notices the "seminar of pigeons... discoursing" which reminds him of his current relative lack of a community. He tries to console himself by asserting that he too has language (i.e., is a social being) but is, at the end, struck by an essential loneliness in the human condition: there are countless languages, of which he cannot aspire to speak more than a few; therefore there is a limitation on the numbers of people to whom he can proclaim his love; and even within his own linguistic or social circumstance, there are a limited number of ways in which to declare one's love - or to declare it with sufficient conviction.

[Haunted]

It speaks to me in two different ways...
even when one doesn't know the language, gibberish has meaning when it comes to I love you.

Here's another, a reversal of roles. It puts the pigeons on a higher plane than man, pigeons in a organized, intellectual seminar finding human language to be gibberish.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Well, it's hard to read this objectively now you've admitted you didn't know what the last stanza meant, Prince... but to be honest, I was scratching my head to work out a connection, or what it amounted to.

I really enjoyed the first stanza with its metaphorical transformation of the pigeons into more intelligent, sentient beings than they are usually given credit for. I would have liked for this part to have been developed.

But, as in other of your poems, you seem to grasp for some meaning behind your observations. And suddenly dragging love into the poem seems a bit desperate, to be honest. Isn't that the curse of (post)modern society - that we know things add up to nothing? Keats would not be impressed by your lack of negative capability! :)

The ref to "negative capability" got to me, true of so many of my poems. I am working on a transitional, bridge verse between one and two; will post it later to the original. Thanks.

And thanks, Haunted.

[Jerrybaldy]

I preffered it without the middle verse. That may be having first read it without it , but the gibberish of your language to the pigeons, leading to the gibberish of most of the ' I love you's ' ever dealt up, flowed better without the 16 wheeler trundling inbetween. I now need to follow this with my most hated of acronyms. IMHO.
cheers Prince
JerryB

[JuniperWoolf]

I liked the first two stanzas, they were very strong. The switch in the first, where we're the ones speaking gibberish and the pigeons are organized, that was fun. I didn't like the last stanza, it struck me as being sentimentality without any meaning at all. Confusing meaningless sentimentality, which is worse.

[symphony]

I read it without the middle verse yesterday, and with it today. I like the observations but find it difficult or desperate when I try to connect them. Unlike in another poem of yours, where there were three completely different images in three stanzas and I did not somehow feel the necessity to try to connect them in any way, this one reads like there should be a connection (probably because these are not images, but observations). However, I like the middle verse best though it was added later on. But did I miss the connection?

[PrinceMyshkin]

Thanks JuniperWoolf & Symphony, and


I preffered it without the middle verse. That may be having first read it without it , but the gibberish of your language to the pigeons, leading to the gibberish of most of the ' I love you's ' ever dealt up, flowed better without the 16 wheeler trundling inbetween. I now need to follow this with my most hated of acronyms. IMHO.
cheers Prince
JerryB

What a freaking dilemma these three diverse responses present me with! I saw yours first, guv, and rejoiced! Because I thought that my new middle verse felt contrived and I am working my way out of my chicken costume to where I might delete it.

Don't despair of using that acronym. Instead, think of it as meaning I Must Have Oatmeal.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Thanks to you I've restored the poem to its original form...

[Jerrybaldy]

I doubted if you would.
best wishes
Thomas
I Must Have Oatmeal.