Category: Poem

The Lingering Fire: Language Before, Within, and Beyond Speech

A Reflection Interwoven with Ante Verba, Verba, and Postverbum

Cy Twombly (1928-2011), Untitled 2005, acrylic on canvas
Cy Twombly (1928-2011), Untitled
2005, acrylic on canvas, 128 x 194½ in
“His madness is a circle of fire, an unbroken circuit of excess, each attempt at containment spilling into the next”—Art historian Malcolm Bull on the Bacchus paintings.

The three poems, CARMINA TRIA: DE VOCE AGGLUTIVA, which follow—Ante Verba, Verba, and Postverbum—did not emerge by design. They followed Liber Agglutivi as if by necessity. Once the treatise had been written, these poems had to be. They are not commentaries on the Liber, nor are they didactic restatements of its metaphysical claims. Rather, they are its echo—its ember. They are the hymns sung at the threshold that Liber Agglutivi only describes.

Even readers unfamiliar with the medieval-inspired treatise can enter these poems directly. They function as meditations on how language lives in us before we speak it, while we speak it, and after our words have fallen silent. Readers of the Liber will recognize these concerns, but the poems make them immediate and felt rather than theoretical.

They move through language as tremor, fire, and resonance. The sequence below mirrors the deeper structure of the Liber: from the agglutum primitivum (pre-verbal memory), to the verbum intransitivum (word as creation), to the postverbum and glosselitha (residual presence).

CARMINA TRIA: DE VOCE AGGLUTIVA

I. Ante Verba

Language as Tremor, Silence as Light

Ante Verba
(Versus ad limen vocis)
Verbum non dicitur, sed fit.
Non transit, sed regnat.
Nomen quod loquitur se ipsum
non oritur ex ore, sed ex ossibus.
Lingua non fert sensum,
sed tremorem.
Memoria quae nescit quid meminerit
audit quod non sonat.
Tacere est tangere lumen.
Loqui est amittere formam,
ut recipiatur flamma.

Before Words
(Verses at the threshold of voice)
The word is not spoken, but becomes.
It does not pass through, but reigns.
The name that speaks itself
arises not from the mouth, but from the bones.
Language carries not meaning,
but tremor.
Memory that knows not what it remembers
hears what does not sound.
To be silent is to touch light.
To speak is to lose form,
so that the flame may be received.

This poem inhabits the space where language has not yet been spoken but is already forming. It suggests that words do not begin with speech—they begin with the body, with memory, with a force older than conscious thought. In the Liber, this is called the agglutum primitivum—the murmur that speaks itself rather than being spoken.

The line “non oritur ex ore, sed ex ossibus” (“arises not from the mouth, but from the bones”) aligns with Martin Heidegger’s vision in Letter on Humanism, where language is not a tool but the “house of Being.” Maurice Blanchot, in The Writing of the Disaster, understands silence not as negation but as a paradoxical mode of presence—a vision we carry forward in our own line from Ante Verba: “Tacere est tangere lumen.”

The poem resists the tendency to think of silence as a void. It suggests instead that silence is already full—that the word is merely what breaks the threshold.

II. Verba

Language Does Not Carry Meaning—It Generates It

Verba
Non instrumenta, sed ignes.
Non indicia, sed invocationes.
Ex spiritu fiunt formae.
Ex sono fit lumen.
Verbum non portat sensum;
generat.
Non sequitur lucem;
effundit eam.
Obliti sumus verba sentire—
at illa nos sentiunt.

Words
Not instruments, but fires.
Not signs, but invocations.
From spirit, forms arise.
From sound, light is made.
The word does not carry meaning;
it generates it.
It does not follow light;
it pours it forth.
We have forgotten how to feel words—
but they feel us.

Verba shifts from anticipation to ignition. Here, the word becomes flame. It does not describe; it creates. This is the essence of the verbum intransitivum found in the Liber—a word that does not pass meaning from subject to object, but emits meaning by its very being.

This echoes Jacques Derrida’s insight in Of Grammatology: that language does not simply transmit ideas—it generates meaning anew with every utterance. Jean-Paul Sartre in What is Literature? treats language as an existential act, not a report, and this vision is mirrored in the line “Verbum non portat sensum; generat.”

The agglutivum, as the Liber defines it, is precisely this: a word that binds meaning not through grammar, but through presence. The poem closes with a reversal: it is not we who perceive words, but words that perceive us.

III. Postverbum

The Spectral Afterlife of Language

Postverbum
Verbum abit, sed tremor manet.
Non vox, sed vestigium vocis.
Non lumen, sed fulgor in ruina.
Post verbum non est silentium,
sed memoria quae loqui recusat.
Forma cecidit—
resonantia viget.
Non est oblivio,
nec repetitio.
Est remanentia
sine nomine.
Quod dictum est, abit.
Quod vivit, remanet.

After-Word
The word departs, but the tremor remains.
Not voice, but the trace of voice.
Not light, but gleam within ruin.
After the word there is not silence,
but memory that refuses to speak.
Form has fallen—
resonance thrives.
It is not forgetting,
nor repetition.
It is remainder
without name.
What has been spoken departs.
What lives remains.

What remains when the word falls away? Postverbum addresses the residue of speech, its spectral persistence. The Liber speaks of the glosselitha—words no longer active but still resonant. This poem inhabits that after-space: where meaning is not present, yet not gone.

Derrida’s trace (especially in Writing and Difference) hovers here: a remnant of presence that cannot be fully recovered, nor fully lost. Nietzsche, in The Gay Science, evokes this through the fragment—the broken form more alive than the whole. And Bachelard’s “intimate immensity,” in The Poetics of Space, seems apt: the vast echo of what once was word.

This is not nostalgia. It is presence beyond sound.

Coda: Language as Tremor, Fire, Trace

The poems above are not marginal to Liber Agglutivi—they are its liturgy. They enact what the treatise evokes: a philosophy of speech where the word is not a vessel but a lifeform.

If the Liber speaks of agglutive words—words that bind not by syntax but by resonance—then these poems are agglutive acts. They offer no argument. They offer invocation.

Together, they invite us to listen differently—not just to what we say, but to what speaks through us when we are most quiet, most present, most alive to the mystery of having language at all.

We do not merely speak.
We are spoken.

Liber Agglutivi: A Work of Fiction, Philosophy, and Reverence

It is difficult to describe the Liber Agglutivi, or as translated into English, The Agglutivum: A Treatise on the Intransitive Voice, for both its origin and content resist conventional classification. Its genesis, as I recount within the pages themselves, was not intellectual but oneiric. The word agglutive—unknown to me then, undefined in any language I … Continue reading “Liber Agglutivi: A Work of Fiction, Philosophy, and Reverence”

THE AGGLUTIVUM A TREATISE ON THE INTRANSITIVE VOICE - bookcover
The Agglutivum: A Treatise on the Intransitive Voice
Transcribed and Edited with Glosses by Donald S. Yarab
Paperback, 58 Pages, 6in × 9in, $7.99 plus $5 postage
CLICK IMAGE ABOVE TO ORDER BOUND COPY

It is difficult to describe the Liber Agglutivi, or as translated into English, The Agglutivum: A Treatise on the Intransitive Voice, for both its origin and content resist conventional classification. Its genesis, as I recount within the pages themselves, was not intellectual but oneiric. The word agglutive—unknown to me then, undefined in any language I knew—visited me repeatedly in sleep. So compelling was its sound and weight that, upon waking, I began at once to give breath to the whisper that had haunted my rest. What emerged was not story or doctrine, but something stranger and perhaps more elemental.

The text that followed felt less composed than revealed—an excavation rather than a construction. It is, in the truest sense, a received work. Its structure—voculae, glosselitha, silentia, postverba—appeared as if drawn from some hidden grammar beneath ordinary speech. Though shaped in Latin (with an English translation as appendix) and framed by scholarly apparatus, it is not a parody nor a pastiche, but a sincere tribute to the metaphysical impulse in language.

Readers may find echoes of Borges, Vico, and Pseudo-Dionysius; others may see affinities with mystical traditions, liturgical fragments, or even speculative linguistics. It may be read as fictive scripture, poetic glossolalia, philosophical provocation, or theological shadowplay. Or perhaps—if read rightly—it is none of these, but instead a call to silence, to memory, to the threshold of meaning itself.

Let it be said plainly: this work will not appeal to all. It is slow and strange, elliptical and spare. But for the rare reader attuned to the hum beneath the words we know, it may, in its own agglutive way, speak.

The work is available to read through the link below as a free PDF. For those who find affinity with it, an inexpensive bound copy may be ordered by clicking the image of the book above.

THE AGGLUTIVUM 
A TREATISE ON THE INTRANSITIVE VOICE

PHILOSOPHICAL EXTENSION: ONTOLOGICAL VOCULAE

A Contemporary Meditation Inspired by the Liber Agglutivi

The Agglutivum suggests but does not systematize a catalog of words that resist conventional grammar—words that seem to create rather than merely describe reality. What follows is a modern attempt to identify and explore such “ontological voculae,” developed in the spirit of the medieval treatise but acknowledging its contemporary construction.

Voculae Agglutivae

A Supplement to the Glossarium Philosophicum
Non omnia verba dicuntur ut loquantur. Quaedam dicuntur ut fiant.

I. Sacra Voculae – Sacred Utterances

These words do not inform; they summon. Often liturgical, they retain weight through resonance, not explanation.

  • Amen
    Confirmatio sine contentu.
    —What is confirmed is not always known.
  • Alleluia
    Laus pura, sine scopo.
    —Praise that outruns its object.
  • Kyrie
    Clamor, non formula.
    —Not request, but primal cry.
  • Hosanna
    Eruptio, non enuntiatio.
    —A word of ascent, not address.
  • Om / Aum
    Vox quae se ipsam audit.
    —The breath that sustains itself.

II. Voculae Primitivae – Primal Expressions

Pre-conceptual utterances: the first stirrings of meaning, or the last.

  • Yes
    Vocabulum consentientis animae.
    —Affirmation without argument.
  • No
    Negatio sine opposito.
    —The first refusal of the void.
  • Ah
    Apertura interioris visus.
    —Recognition unmediated.
  • Oh
    Exclamatio praesentiae subitae.
    —When the world enters unbidden.
  • [Intake of breath before weeping]
    Suspirium originis.
    —A language too full to speak.

III. Nomina Se Nominantia – Names That Name Themselves

These words contain themselves, and alter meaning with each utterance.

  • God
    Vocabulum ad quod omnis significatio deficit.
    —The name that names the unnamable.
  • I
    Index mobilis identitatis.
    —Each speaker remakes it.
  • Here
    Locus qui loquitur se ipsum.
    —Presence given in the utterance.
  • Now
    Tempus quod fit dum nominatur.
    —Time speaking its own arrival.

IV. Verba Liminalia – Threshold Words

Spoken not to describe, but to open a space.

  • Hello
    Initiatio contactus.
    —More door than declaration.
  • Goodbye
    Benedictio transitus.
    —Departure sanctified in speech.
  • Please
    Vulnerabilitas facta audibilis.
    —A soft invocation of the will.
  • Welcome
    Domus facta verbo.
    —The house that builds itself in greeting.

V. Glosselithae Viventia – Words Worn Smooth by Use

Repeated beyond meaning, yet retaining force.

  • Love
    Verbum laesum; reclamatione indiget.
    —Desecrated by misuse, yet pulsing still.
  • Peace
    Optatio in figura dissoluta.
    —A longing that sounds like a promise.
  • Home
    Non locus, sed reditus.
    —Not place, but return.
  • Mother
    Verbum primordiale; lingua ante lingua.
    —The first word spoken without grammar.

VI. Voculae Intranslatae – The Untranslatable

Not exotic curiosities, but deep resonances foreign to our tongue.

  • Saudade (Portuguese)
    Absentia praesentiae desideratae.
    —Longing for what once was or never was.
  • Duende (Spanish)
    Spiritus tenebrosus artis viventis.
    —The dark, unteachable spark of art.
  • Hiraeth (Welsh)
    Nostalgia quae locum non habet.
    —Homesickness for an imagined past.

VII. Voculae Vulneratae – Wounded Words

To be spoken only with reverence, if at all.

  • Freedom
    Verbum quod fuit, et quod mendacio circumdatur.
    —Once invoked in hope, now weaponized.
  • Truth
    Conceptus fractus inter instrumenta.
    —Broken under the weight of use.
  • Justice
    Verbum spoliatum, ad reclamationem vocatum.
    —A word in exile.

Nota Terminalis:

Verba haec tangenda sunt sicut lapides post imbrem. Non sunt instrumenta, sed accessus. Loqui ea est transire limen. Tacere ea est servare lumen.

Where the Furies Pause

by Donald S. Yarab

In myth, the Furies pursue the guilty. In this meditative poem, they do not chase or condemn, but pause—witnesses to memory, silence, and the uncertain balance between reckoning and reprieve. Beneath the yew, they wait—not gone, not appeased, but listening.

Vincent van Gogh, Trunk of an Old Yew Tree (1888) Oil on canvas, 91 × 71 cm London, Helly Nahmad Gallery
Vincent van Gogh, Trunk of an Old Yew Tree (1888)
Oil on canvas, 91 × 71 cm
London, Helly Nahmad Gallery

“Necdum illum aut trunca lustrauerat obuia taxo / Eumenis…”
— Statius, Thebaid VIII. 9–10

“Nor yet had the Fury met him, bearing the lustral yew…”
— Statius, Thebaid VIII. 9–10 (adapted translation)

As darkness descends and light abates,
The Furies wake at the turning of fates.
No horn is blown, no omen flies—
Only the hush where judgment lies.

They come not crowned, but cloaked in ash,
With broken names and eyes that flash.
Not wrath alone, but what endures—
The weight of memory that never cures.

They walk where silence used to sleep,
Where secrets rot and letters bleed.
The breath of dusk is cold and tight—
A wound reopens in the night.

By yews they pause, where death takes root,
In soil grown thick with ash and fruit.
The bark is split with silent cries,
The rings record what speech denies.

They do not speak, but still the trees
Murmur of trespass in the breeze.
The wind forgets its mournful tone—
As if the world waits to atone.

A shadow stirs, but does not fall;
A light withdraws, but leaves a call.
No hand is raised, no doom is cast—
And yet the pulse runs through the past.

The air is thick with what might be:
A breaking, or a turning key.
The Furies halt—but do not sleep.
And from the yews, the silence… deep.

So still they stand beneath the yew—
The Furies veiled in dusk’s soft hue.
Its needles dark, its berries red,
It shelters both the quick and dead.

They neither strike nor turn away,
But hold the hush at break of day.
Their eyes are dark, their purpose blurred—
As if they wait to hear a word.

The Orange Sentinels

In honor of the seasonal watchmen of the Ohio Turnpike

Ohio Turnpike
Looking east, the Ohio Turnpike climbs out of the Cuyahoga Valley in northeast Ohio. The Orange Sentinels, which first bloom in spring, survive through autumn.

My friend John W. called me while he was traveling the Ohio Turnpike and noted the abundance of orange barrels delaying his journey. I quickly quipped that he should be happy the Orange Sentinels, for which Ohio is justly famed, were guarding his way. And then I composed the following short poem in his honor—and in honor of the Sentinels lining his path:

The Orange Sentinels
Each spring, they bloom—
Not in gardens, but on shoulders and medians,
Where asphalt warms and groans beneath the sun.
Tall and mute, they stand in solemn rows,
Garbed in Day-Glo regalia,
Their mission unclear, their presence unyielding.
Some say they guard progress, others delay.
To us, they are the high priests of frustration,
An order eternal, sanctioned by no god we trust.
Ohio’s own bitter blossom.

Betwixt Dawn and Dusk: A Meditation on Life and Dream

Preface

The first lines of this poem came to me in the night—those strange hours when thought and dream pass like shadows through the mind. I awoke briefly, not fully, and the phrase lingered: between and betwixt dawn and dusk… and the inverse, between and betwixt dusk and dawn. I held onto it until morning, when I set it down in full light. The poem that followed is a meditation on those intervals—the thresholds of consciousness and the veils through which the soul moves in its waking and its dreaming.

What begins as a reflection on the daily arc—from sunrise to sunset—soon turns inward, toward the more uncertain passage between dusk and dawn, where memory, time, and identity unravel and reweave. The Heraclitean epigraph provides the key: “The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.” Yet even that distinction, perhaps, is not so firm as it seems.

The accompanying painting—Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket—mirrors the poem’s atmosphere: its drift between form and dissolution, its reverent wondering, its silence punctuated by brief illumination. Together, word and image ask not what life is, but whether it is lived or dreamed—and what remains of us in either case.

Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket James McNeill Whistler (c. 1872–1877) Oil on canvas, 60.3 × 46.6 cm (23.7 × 18.3 in) Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit
James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket
c. 1872–1877 | Oil on canvas, 60.3 × 46.6 cm
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit

Betwixt the Spheres

by Donald S. Yarab

“The waking have one common world,
but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.”
—Heraclitus, Fragment 89

Betwixt the dawn’s gold-burnished, trembling rise,
And evening’s hush where embered echoes gleam,
A soul drifts outward under waking skies—
Or inward, through the latticework of dream.

Morning declares the world as firm and real,
Noon lays its claim in certainties and fire,
Yet twilight draws the veil we cannot feel,
And sings the hush of unfulfilled desire.

The hours fall like leaves from unseen trees,
Their passage soft, impermanent, and strange.
Some name it life, who walk it by degrees—
While others call it dream, and feel no change.

So tell me, when the final light has flown,
And silence hangs, unbroken and immense—
Was it a road we walked, and called our own,
Or but a fleeting spark in dream’s pretense?

But what of time when sun has slipped from sight,
And stars drift forth like seeds of the unknown?
What voice is heard within the hush of night,
When all the world lies still, and we—alone?

Between and betwixt the dusk and morning’s grace,
A different kind of being comes to bloom:
Where shadows speak, and time forgets its place,
And long-dead voices gather in the gloom.

In sleep, the veil grows thin, the borders bend,
And hours bleed into realms that none can chart.
The soul recalls what lies beyond the end,
And bears the hush of ages in its heart.

These hours are not lost—they are the deep,
The ocean floor where buried visions gleam.
From them we rise, like wanderers from sleep,
Still marked by fire, still echoing the dream.

So stands the soul, on thresholds vast and wide,
Between and betwixt the turning of the spheres—
What seemed a life, a dream walks at its side,
Measured not in hours, but in wonder—and in tears.