DIFFERENT STAMMERS,

DIFFERENT SOUNDS,

DIFFERENT DIALECTS

Poem for Today - April 4, 2014

STAMMER

Stammer is no handicap.
It is a mode of speech.

Stammer is the silence that falls
between the word and its meaning,
just as lameness is the
silence that falls between
the word and the deed.

Did stammer precede language
or succeed it?
It is only a dialect or a
language itself? These questions
make the linguists stammer.

When a whole people stammer,
stammer becomes their mothertongue:
as it is with us now.

God too must have stammered
when He created Man.
That is why all the words of man
carry different meanings.
That is why everything he utters
from his prayers to his commands
stammers,
like poetry.

(c) K. Satchidanandan

Translated from the

Malayalam by the author