A Word For Everything - Oct 1 2023

 

A Word For Everything

Oct 1 2023

There is no word for this

I find myself saying

when language fails.

I feel envious of the Germans

and their run-on Jenga words,

great tottering towers

of guttural sound

that hold nothing back,

probing the darkness

in the human heart,

spelling out a worldview

of Teutonic candour

cluttered with consonants.

Weltshmertz and shadenfreude,

2 familiar words

English has, quite sensibly

already conscripted.

Then freundschaftbeziehungen

and backpfeigfengesicht,

respectively

“bonds of friendship”

and “face in need of a fist”.

But my favourite is the Yiddish, verklempt,

that ineffable feeling

of the clutch in your heart

when you are overwhelmed by emotion

and tears are beginning to well.

How fortunate

that when English colonized the world

it was not precious

about purity,

appropriating words

from everywhere

without apology.

How lovely

to speak a mongrel tongue

with an insatiable appetite.

But still, it's not German,

the language

with a word for everything,

a specificity

that strips meaning down to its spine.

Too bad

my thick tongue

isn't up to it.

And that my ear hurts

hearing such great compounded words

barked out

with German precision.

An alphabet soup

of tongue-twisters,

so specific

no contingency

is ever missed.