Babel

I thumb my dictionary
like the rosetta stone
to translate the heiroglyphics
of your simple poem
but an ankh and painted eye
are all I see.

We speak our own languages,
isolate tongues;
from the tower we were driven
into our own lands:
population one.

We crossed deserts,
the scrub of a thousand hills,
speaking with our hands,
shaking our heads,
making marks with sticks.

Our torches move in semaphor
over the scratchings in these
ancient caves.
Count ten thousand years:
the bow, the deer--
our splintered voice.

Teresa White


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