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Words
by Sharmagne Leland-St. John

We live in a world of words.
Dangling participles,
and action verbs.
Whether etched in hieroglyphs,
‘neath pyramids
or painted on dark, dank cavern walls,
or painstakingly chisled
in cold stone halls,
We live in a world of words

They tell of our achievements,
our histories, they hand down our myths.
Be they written in ancient runes by druid priests,
or drawn in Maya codices
or penned in ink with feathery plumes
We live in a world of words.

Prepositions and state of being verbs
Nouns and predicates, adjectives,
And blurbs

Books are made of ink, paper, cloth and glue
Pronouns, conjunctions and adverbs too
We live in a world of words!

Our alphabets be they Latin or Hebrew,
Aramic, Arabic, Coptic or Cyrillic,
Gave us the Torah, the Koran, the Bible.
Manuscripts were carefully inscribed in Sanskrit,
on palm leaves and stored in jars.
Like the Dead Sea Scrolls,
they preserve our rituals,
Whether they be written
In Egyptian, Greek, and Demotic,
Like the Rosetta Stone
Or carved in Japanese and Chinese characters
On ivory and whalebone
We live in a world of words.
Infinitive phrases, subjects and compound verbs
We live in a world of words!


Written for and presented at the 25th Birthday Celebration of the Arlington Library September 30, 2006





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