Published on: 1/26/2016
In Defense of Tongues

We require other organs, a sensory organization different from

that which perceives only words as such, if we want to understand

within the word the thought that another wishes to communicate.

      — Rudolf Steiner, from The Boundaries of Natural Science

A tongue accused of tripping over words
that then express by accident a truth
may try to mount a spurious defense,
adducing, say, a voiced array of surds
transformed by colic or an aching tooth—
an unintended sequence of events—

whereby a "choice of trucks" becomes the "joys
of drugs." Though Sigmund Freud was surely right
when he averred that slips of tongue are wrought
in hidden foundries, words turn into noise
when they are chanted endlessly, the thought
they carried disappearing like the light

of serial undifferentiat-
ed days. It stands to reason that all tongues
should be forgiven their unmindful slips,
and likewise for the hyperactive lungs,
those rhythmic bellows pledged to regulate
the void transactions issued from the lips

of social creatures. All we know for sure
is that a seventh sense exists, the means
by which we comprehend the spoken sounds
that reach our ears. On busy village greens
we greet our brethren while we make our rounds,
with little care for words if hearts are pure.