“BUNAHAN When the last speaker of Boro falls silent, who will notice the first-grown feather of a bird’s wing? (gansuthi) or feel how far pretending to love (onsay) is from loving for the last time (onsra)? Quiet and uneasy, in an unfamiliar place (asusu) no one sees her, or listens; there is less of her than there was. The last speaker feels Boro’s world fall apart, knowledge unravels: healing plants go unseen; the bodies of animals are unreadable. With a last thought, onguboy (to love it all, from the heart), she leaves fragments of the world she held in place. We touch their husks, about to speak and about not to speak (bunhan, bunahan); awash in loss, incomplete. Note: The italicized words are from Boro, an endangered language still spoken in parts of northern India. For more on this story, see Mark Abley’s Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages.” PoetryLanguageWonderPoetPoemAntiquityLinguisticsLanguages And CulturesLost Languages Author:Laurelyn Whitt
“Rim are there horizons where there is no horizontal where mountains fold space, hold distance up? embedded in a canyon our heads tilt instinctively. here earth meets sky, we can reach it; the rim does not shimmer and recede. we lean into diagonal lives, relieved of right angles eyes, arms, hearts drawn upward, vectored to ridgelines keenly aware of the slant of time, its shape and substance; it is a wedge; it moves along ray-stroked slopes; we pass into it, are passed over.” PoetryNaturePoetHikingGrand CanyonSouthwestCanyon Author:Laurelyn Whitt