Sunday, December 10, 2006

Logorrhoea

I've always loved that word - the Greek for 'word-flow'; suggestive of a helpless, incontinent verbosity.

I was discussing the word - and its applicability to us - with a writer friend a little while ago, and that conversation prompted this little poem. A nice little summary, I think, of the way most writers feel, and of the modest wish we share to make some contribution, however small and indirect, to posterity.


Logorrhoea

I am full of words:
They surge through my veins
They pulse in my temples
Press on my heart
Burst in my brain
Gush out upon the ground

When all my words have leaked away
I will cease to be

But the words I have spilled
Sink deep and spread
May yet enrich the earth
Feed some unknown future flowering forth

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