SPEECH  IMPEDIMENT 

Poem for Today -May 20, 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?

Is it 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 now with us.

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.

© K. Satchidanandan, 

Translated from the Malayalam 

by the author, page 484

 in Language for a New Century,

 edited by Tina Chang, 

Nathalie Handal and 

Ravi Shankar, 2008