Vernacular
Smith, R.T.
Vernacular It was Thoreau who wanted to pull words up with dirt still clinging to the roots. He needed to watch Latin, Sanskrit, and Greek bleed to Saxon, then English, green as elm leaves...
...He told Emerson, who was astonished at his arrowpoint collection, "I just reach down, and there they are, so many syllables in the path...
...He needed to watch Latin, Sanskrit, and Greek bleed to Saxon, then English, green as elm leaves or bright as privet...
...Language," he would ponder, "is the way my tongue makes sense of shadows, the breath and osculum it lives in, the way flora orchestrate water and obdurate soil...
...R.T...
...He moved through fields and woodlands tasting radiant moss, tickseed and meadow rue, promising nothing odd, crackpot or disfangled could ever be mere debris if you reach down and lift it, if you speak its savory name precisely in the oracular household of the unfurling world...
...He saw each flint as a berry and touched it to his tongue to know something of flight and the nicked fingers that shaped it...
...He kept a steady thirst for sap and the crisp snap of a tuber, savoring equally carrot, sumac, and rhubarb or dew sparkling on chitin...
...Smith 20...
Vol. 126 • May 1999 • No. 10
