To Speak

This post is an extension of the previous post by Dan. To clarify, the poet he menions there is me, and the poem in question is this, which drew this comment. I'm overwhelmded by the way Dan has come to my defence. Thanks, Dan. You've eloquently made your point about virtual terrorism, and you're absolutley right. Like I said in our correspondence, I was shaken by that strange comment. I would normally not have paid much attention to something like that, but this blog is different from a personal blog, and we all realize that there is a stated purpose behind any writing we put up here. Literary this blog might be, but given the import of what brought it about, each word put up here must have the gravity of chiselmarks on granite. And so, I did for a moment falter and question myself- did I anger someone who perhaps had been too close to the brink of the madness that day, and to whom it might have seemed facetious? And that let me take another long, hard look at the 'poem'. I do not know whether it qualifies as 'poetry', if there are any yardsticks for passing that judgement. But I do know that those words were wrenched out of my, in a blinding madenning stomach churning motion, even as the darkness closed around me. What darkness?, it may be asked. After all, I was sitting here in the comfort of this far-flung city, so far away from that grisly rite of passage. But we do not live in the flesh alone. And to live in times like these, to see that paegant of death in a procession of image after insensate image on one's television screen, is to begin to lose one's tenuous grip on sanity. Yes, I was pretentious- I was pretending to hold on to sanity in a world which has forgotten the meaning of that word- I was trying to claw it off from the clouds. As I said in that piece, words are such frail, fragile things, and when so many lie maimed and mutilated, to rattle of words might seem like mental masturbation. But we are made by words, o anonymous commenter, and they are the flickering screen through which we look out at the world of the exterior. Do not forget that behind the deafening blasts, behind the faces masked in hatred, lie words- words of bigotry, words of intolerance, words of blind, hideous malice. And to counter them, it is important that we also counter with those same fragile weapons- because when flesh and bone decay and are translated back to the elements from which their syllables were formed, words still remain as echoes of lost songs. I may not be able to do much, but I can still speak, and to speak is to begin the process of reaffirmation.
Regards,
Arka