Tag: poetry

The Poet’s Apparatus: On Method, Reflection, and the Gift of Context

“The poem is the cry of its occasion, / Part of the res itself and not about it.” — Wallace Stevens, “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven”

Lacrimae Sanguinis 2025: A Lamentation in Four Movements

By Donald S. Yarab

I.

Lacrimae sanguinis,
Animae nigrae hominum terram maculant.
They walk not as men, but as shadows unshriven,
Each step a silence, each breath a wound.
The ground groans beneath the weight of the fallen,
And justice, long buried, forgets her name.
No trumpet sounds for the guiltless slain,
Only the whisper of blood in the dust.¹

Lacrimae sanguinis—
The blackened souls of men stain the earth.

II.

Hate kindles fires no rain can quell,
Greed carves its name in the marrow of kings.
Fear is a vulture, circling unborn hopes,
Its wings beating lies into trembling hearts.
These three—unholy trinity—march undenied,²
And temples crack beneath their tread.
Where once stood gardens, now only ash—
And the breath of God withdraws in sorrow.³

Lacrimae sanguinis—
The blackened souls of men stain the earth.

III.

No voice comes forth from the cloud or flame,
The heavens are sealed in unyielding hush.⁴
The stars avert their gaze, and time forgets its course—
Even the winds have ceased to speak His name.
Altars stand cold, their offerings stale,
And the priest no longer lifts his hands.
The silence is not peace, but exile—
A stillness too vast for prayer to fill.⁵

Lacrimae sanguinis—
The blackened souls of men stain the earth.

IV.

He turned His face—and we, our backs.⁶
Not in wrath, but in weary disdain.
The mirror cracked, the image lost,
And we wander, eyes open yet unseeing.⁷
We build our Babels in crumbling dust,
Raise thrones upon bones, call ruin law.
Light knocks, but we bolt the gate from within—
And call the silence proof He never was.⁸

Lacrimae sanguinis—
The blackened souls of men stain the earth.

Footnotes:

  1. “Shadows unshriven” / “Justice… forgets her name” — Cf. Psalm 82:6–7 and Isaiah 59:14–15. Echoes of prophetic lament over moral collapse and unreconciled souls.
  2. “Unholy trinity” — An inverted image of Augustine’s De Trinitate: hate, greed, and fear form a perverse sacred order.
  3. “Gardens turned to ash” — Evokes Eden undone. The breath of God (Genesis 2:7) has withdrawn.
  4. “The heavens are sealed” — Amos 8:11–12; Lamentations 3:8. Divine silence as the most damning judgment.
  5. “Silence… not peace, but exile” — Apophatic void, not luminous unknowability. Cf. Isaiah 45:15: Deus absconditus.
  6. “He turned His face” — Inverts the Aaronic blessing (Numbers 6:24–26). A divine turning not in anger, but in sorrowful withdrawal.
  7. “Mirror cracked” — A fall from incomplete vision (1 Corinthians 13:12) into permanent distortion.
  8. “Call the silence proof He never was” — Resonates with Nietzsche’s “God is dead,” here framed as mutual estrangement, not denial.

Note: The image of the soul as stained through inordinate attachment finds classical expression in Summa Theologica I–II, Q.86, Art.1, where Aquinas defines sin’s stain not as a substance, but as a privation of the soul’s brightness—a metaphorical shadow cast when the soul cleaves inordinately to created things, against reason and divine order. In this lamentation, the stain is projected outward: what is blackened within stains the world without.ain is projected outward—what is blackened within stains the world without.

It is easy to imagine the critical response already. Some heir to Harold Bloom’s anxiety-of-influence throne would ascertain that I, the creator, am anxious, insecure, prone to nail-biting—that I found it necessary to express my anxiety in more apparatus than poem, drowning the verse in scholarly scaffolding because I lack confidence in the work’s ability to stand alone.

Such banal criticism would miss the point entirely. If I were anxious about critical reception, if I were truly insecure about the poem’s merits, I would have foregone apparatus altogether in sure foreknowledge of such harsh rebuke. The apparatus exists precisely because I am secure in my intent, my method, and my purpose. I am not writing for elite pedantics and pedagogues who jealously guard their interpretive privileges, but for myself and any who wish to partake of poetry’s riches, whatever their opportunity to swim in the canon’s depths.

The truth is, those who argue against apparatus are those who would have poems essentially confined to an elite club, complete with secret handshakes, symbols, and degrees of membership. Like Skull and Bones or the Masonic lodges, traditional poetry criticism has long functioned as an initiatory society where full membership requires years of study, the right mentors, and familiarity with increasingly obscure reference points. The “let the poem stand on its own” argument sounds democratically pure but functions as cultural gatekeeping, preserving poetry as the domain of those who already possess the cultural capital to decode allusions, recognize forms, and trace influences.

When critics rail against apparatus, they defend a system where interpretive authority belongs to those with the “right” education, the proper literary pedigree. The poem becomes a kind of shibboleth—if you do not immediately recognize the echoes of Job, the inversions of Augustine, the liturgical cadences, well, perhaps serious poetry isn’t for you.

My apparatus dismantles that exclusivity. It offers initial guideposts to anyone willing to engage, no secret handshakes required. This is cultural hospitality, not anxiety—a deliberate act of democratization that makes visible the materials from which the poem emerged.

The Method: Nexus, Interaction, Reflection

A poem does not emerge from nothing. It rises from what might be called a nexus—a convergence of memory, reading, experience, and the particular urgency that calls forth language. In composing Lacrimae Sanguinis, this nexus became especially visible: biblical lament tradition, Thomistic theology, contemporary spiritual desolation, and liturgical rhythms that have shaped both prayer and protest for centuries. But rather than hide this genealogy, I choose to make it visible as part of the poem’s offering.

The nexus is not a conscious construction—it cannot be willed into being. Rather, it emerges when conditions are right, when reading and experience have prepared a space where seemingly unrelated elements suddenly reveal their hidden kinship. The Latin refrain lacrimae sanguinis did not arise from scholarly deliberation but from convergence, where liturgical memory met contemporary anguish.

Within this nexus, meaning arises through interaction—the dynamic tension between elements that resist easy synthesis. The “unholy trinity” of hate, greed, and fear stands in deliberate tension with Augustine’s conception of divine Trinity, not as simple inversion but as recognition of how spiritual language can be perverted by the very forces it seeks to name and resist. The line “He turned His face—and we, our backs” emerges from interplay between the Aaronic blessing and the lived experience of mutual estrangement.

The apparatus participates in this interaction by creating dialogue between poem and source. When I note that “silence is not peace, but exile” resonates with Isaiah’s Deus absconditus, I do not suggest the poem merely illustrates the biblical text. Rather, I propose that ancient prophetic cry and modern spiritual dislocation illuminate one another—that meaning arises in their interaction, not in either alone.

The apparatus reveals process without explaining away mystery. When I show that “He turned His face—and we, our backs” emerges from tension between Aaronic blessing and contemporary estrangement, I do not solve the line’s meaning—I multiply its resonances. The reader now encounters not just the line’s immediate emotional impact but also its dialogue with liturgical tradition, its inversion of expectation, its theological implications. The apparatus does not reduce mystery to mechanism; it shows how many mysteries converge in a single moment of language.

This transparency serves poetry’s deepest purpose: not to mystify through obscurity but to reveal the actual complexity of experience. When sources remain hidden, readers may sense depths they cannot fathom and mistake inaccessibility for profundity. When sources become visible, the true marvel emerges—not that the poet knows obscure references, but that these disparate materials can achieve such unity, that ancient texts still speak to contemporary anguish.

Finally, reflection—not as conclusion but as ongoing process. The apparatus serves this reflective function, helping both creator and reader recall not just sources but the quality of attention that makes encounter possible. By showing rather than hiding the poem’s genealogy, it acknowledges that interpretation is always collaborative, that meaning emerges from ongoing conversation between text and reader.

Confidence, Not Anxiety

This method emerges from confidence rather than defensiveness. When apparatus functions generously, it says to readers: here are some materials that were present when this poem emerged, but you are free to make of them—and of the poem itself—what you will. This represents confidence in both the work’s integrity and the reader’s capacity for independent meaning-making.

Critics will object that apparatus risks over-determining meaning, that by naming sources I constrain interpretation. This objection misunderstands how meaning actually works in poetry. The apparatus does not tell readers what to think about the convergence of Nietzschean pronouncement and prophetic lament—it simply makes that convergence visible as one layer among many.

Consider the reader who recognizes the Aaronic blessing inversion without consulting footnotes, discovers resonances I never anticipated or intended, and finds connections to their own liturgical memory. The apparatus does not prevent this encounter—it enriches the conversation by adding another voice. Meaning multiplies rather than contracts when more materials become available for interaction.

The real constraint on interpretation comes from ignorance, not knowledge. When readers miss allusions entirely, they are trapped in partial understanding. When sources become visible, readers gain freedom to accept, reject, or build upon the connections offered. The apparatus functions as invitation, not limitation.

We live in an age where what was once common cultural knowledge—biblical narratives, classical philosophy, liturgical traditions—can no longer be assumed as shared reference points. This is not a failure of readers or education but a consequence of cultural acceleration. Neither poets nor readers can be expected to carry the full weight of cultural memory. When canonical works become unfamiliar, when classical allusions require explanation, apparatus serves not as condescension but as courtesy.

The apparatus preserves a record of one moment’s convergence—the nexus as it appeared when the poem emerged—but it cannot and should not constrain future encounters. It functions as invitation rather than explanation, creating conditions for ongoing dialogue rather than settling interpretive questions once and for all.

Method as Cultural Hospitality

What emerges is method as interpretive generosity rather than critical control. The apparatus offers tools for encounter while acknowledging that even the creator does not exhaust the poem’s meaning. The poem, once written, becomes available for encounter rather than possession, even by the one who wrote it.

This hospitality extends to readers at all levels of familiarity with the sources. Those who recognize the allusions immediately may find additional layers in seeing them made explicit. Those encountering Augustine or Isaiah for the first time receive invitations to explore further. Those who prefer immediate encounter may ignore the scholarly apparatus entirely. All approaches are welcome.

In this way, creative method and interpretive philosophy align. Both resist the fantasy of complete control or final understanding. Both acknowledge that meaning emerges in relationship. Both find fulfillment not in closure but in the ongoing conversation they make possible.

The apparatus, properly understood, serves this conversation. It is not the last word on the poem’s meaning but an invitation to the kind of careful attention that allows meaning to emerge. Like the poem itself, it creates conditions for encounter rather than commanding specific responses.

This is method in poetry as in interpretation: not a tool of conquest but a lens through which the materials of experience might reveal some of their hidden connections. The nexus forms, interactions unfold, reflection deepens—and occasionally, if conditions are right, something emerges that was not there before. Something worth sharing with anyone willing to receive it.

Songs I Thought I Understood: A Requiem and Reflection in Ten Refrains

Vinyl record on turntable
Photo by Diana u2728 on Pexels.com

These ten poetic reflections revisit the protest anthems, lullabies, and cultural hymns that shaped a generation—songs we once sang in innocence, defiance, or hope. But time has sharpened their meanings, revealed their silences, and unsettled their assurances.

Songs I Thought I Understood is not a repudiation of the music, but a reckoning with what we missed—or could not yet see—in the melodies we inherited. Each piece responds to a specific song, not by rewriting it, but by listening anew with older ears and quieter questions.

Songs I Thought I Understood

A Requiem and Reflection in Ten Refrains

by Donald S. Yarab

“For the ones who heard the songs and still ask the questions.”

The Ten Refrains:

Puff Remembers (after “Puff the Magic Dragon”)

The Valley Below (after “One Tin Soldier”)

The Flowers Still Bloom (after “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”)

The Needle Lifts (after “This Land Is Your Land”)

The Submarine Below (after “Yellow Submarine”)

No One Was Saved (after “Eleanor Rigby”)

The Wind Still Blows (after “Blowin’ in the Wind”)

Can It Be (after “Let It Be”)

Neon Psalm (after “The Sound of Silence”)

We Have Not (after “We Shall Overcome”)

Puff Remembers

(after “Puff the Magic Dragon”)

Somewhere over the rainbow,
Once upon a time,
In a land not so far away—
Yes, with dragons.

Puff—I remember him well.
He sailed without maps,
Carried no sword,
Only stories.

But Little Jackie Paper—
No, I never knew him.
He came, they say, with sealing wax,
With strings, with child-sized laughter.

And then he left.
As children do.
As they must.

Puff stayed behind,
Watching the tide pull dreams from the sand,
Waiting longer than most would,
Believing perhaps too much.

Now I am older than Puff was then.
The toys are gone.
The books are shut.
Even memory, sometimes, forgets its lines.

Still—
Sometimes I think I hear the flap of canvas,
The creak of rope,
The rhythm of a boat
That knows its way through time.

He may be out there yet—
Not waiting, exactly,
But still sailing,
With room for one more story.

The Valley Below

(after “One Tin Soldier”)

I remember One Tin Soldier,
The mountain people, the treasure buried deep,
The message of peace—
Unspoken, unread,
Trampled by riders from the valley below.

As a child, I did not understand
Why they came with swords
To claim what was freely offered.
I did not understand
Why they could not wait,
Why they did not read.

They were simply the People in the Valley Below.

But now—I know them.
They live not far from here.
They speak in votes and verdicts,
In profits and justifications,
In silence, and in slogans
Worn smooth with use.

Some are kind, some mean well.
Most are afraid.
Many never climb.

And though the treasure still lies buried—
That old dream of peace,
The circle unbroken,
The better world whispered in songs—
I see fewer walking toward the mountain.
Fewer still willing to wait.

The child I was weeps,
Not for the dead soldier,
But for the living who will never read
The words beneath the stone.

The Flowers Still Bloom

(after “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”)

The flowers—I see them.
They bloom each spring,
In roadside ditches,
In tended gardens,
In places untouched by war
Only by accident.

But where are they,
Even now?
Where are the promises they once held—
The wreaths we laid,
The songs we sang,
The lessons we said we had learned?

Where are the girls who picked them,
And the boys they gave them to,
Before uniforms,
Before funerals,
Before forgetting?

They bloom still,
Unconcerned.
Nature does not mourn the fallen.
It only covers them.

We placed our hope in petals
And let them drift into the graves—
Answers too proud
Or too ashamed
To be spoken.

Yes, I see the flowers.
But I see them differently now.
They are not peace.
They are not memory.
They are what grows when nothing else is left.

The Needle Lifts

(after “This Land Is Your Land”)

This land is your land,
This land is mine—
That is what the song said.
And we sang it,
Hand in hand,
Before we knew
Who drew the lines.

From California to the New York island—
Yes, the rivers still run,
The redwoods still rise,
But whose boots
Are turned away
At the fence?
Whose tent
Stands just outside
The melody?

I walked that ribbon of highway once.
I saw the “No Trespassing” sign,
Half-buried in dust.
And behind it—
Nothing but wind,
And memory.

This land was made for you and me.
But the deed was never signed.
Or if it was,
It has been lost
Beneath centuries of ash and ink.

The voices fall quiet.
The turntable slows.
The needle lifts.

And still the land stretches,
Unresolved.
The chorus unreturned.
The question unsung.

The Submarine Below

(after “Yellow Submarine”)

We all lived there, once—
In the Yellow Submarine.
Or so we sang.

A vessel of laughter,
Of porthole dreams
And choruses in perfect time.

We believed in it,
In its bright hull,
Its cartoon courage,
Its watertight world
Where everyone belonged
And nothing intruded.

Unity,
We thought,
Could be painted in primary colors.
Could float beneath the noise,
And keep us safe.

But the world knocked.
And the hull bent.
And the sea
Was not always blue.

Some never boarded.
Some were told
There was no room.
Some were thrown overboard
Before the song began.

Now I wonder—
Was the submarine ever real?
Or just a dream we made
To keep the waters from us?

If it sails still,
It does so
With ghosts at the helm,
And a quiet
We mistook for peace.

No One Was Saved

(after “Eleanor Rigby”)

Eleanor gathered the rice like a rite—
Not a wedding,
But a funeral in disguise.
No one noticed.
No one asked
Why she did it alone.

She lived in a world of quiet corners,
Of teacups with dust,
Of pews that creaked
For no one in particular.

I did not see her then.
Not really.
She was background—
A figure in a verse
I sang without knowing.

And Father McKenzie—
He wrote his sermons by candlelight,
Even when no one came.
He believed in the act,
In the speaking itself,
As if God were listening
Even if the people were not.

I used to think
They were odd.
Sad, yes—
But distant,
Part of another time.

Now I see them in doorways,
At bus stops,
Scrolling through silence
On glowing screens.
I see them in myself,
In the way I answer fewer calls,
In the prayers I no longer finish.

All the lonely people—
They are not elsewhere.
They are not lost in some old song.
They are here.
And no one was saved.

The Wind Still Blows

(after “Blowin’ in the Wind”)

I remember when the answer
Was blowing in the wind.
We sang it as if that meant
It was near,
As if the breeze would carry it to us
If we just opened our hands
Or listened hard enough.

But I have stood in that wind now.
Not once.
Not in youthful chorus,
But in silence.

And the answers do not ride so lightly.

How many roads?
Too many to count.
Too many lined with names
Etched in metal,
Or cardboard signs that ask
Not for peace,
But for spare change.

How many ears must one man have
Before he hears the cry?
Enough to wear out the listening.
Enough to forget which voice was his.

The cannonballs still fly,
Though we call them by different names now—
Policy.
Preemption.
Profit.
“Necessary force.”

Yes, the wind still blows.
But the answers,
If they are there,
Have long since been scattered
Across deserts,
Across oceans,
Across generations too tired
To ask the questions anymore.

Can It Be

(after “Let It Be”)

When I find myself in times of silence,
I do not hear
The words of wisdom.
I hear the ache of asking
Whether silence is answer,
Or simply absence.

Let it be, they said.
And I tried.
I tried to let the world
Unfold as it would,
To trust in the slow work of time.

But still the wars came.
Still the towers fell.
Still the hands reached out
And found nothing waiting.

Mother Mary—
She comes to some.
But others
Find no visitor
In the night.

Let it be?
Can it be?
Is there something
We have not yet asked,
Some word not spoken
Because we were told
Not to speak at all?

There will be an answer—
So the song promised.
But I have learned
That sometimes
The answer is another question.

Neon Psalm

(after “The Sound of Silence”)

Hello darkness—
It does not answer.
It scrolls.
It flashes.

We used to whisper to the void
And hope it heard.
Now we shout
And hope it trends.

The prophets write in hashtags,
Their sermons flickering
Across shattered glass,
Their congregations swiping
And moving on.

No one walks the quiet streets,
No one weeps in the back pew.
The cathedral is a comment thread
Lit by the glow
Of the god we built
To hear ourselves.

No one dared disturb
The sound of silence—
That was the line.
But now it is all disturbance.
The silence
Is what we fear.

I remember when words
Had gravity,
When they settled in the chest
And waited
To be spoken with care.

Now even grief
Is curated.

Still—
Somewhere beneath the algorithms,
Beneath the noise mistaken for voice,
Beneath the sponsored silence,
I believe the old language
Waits.

Not to go viral.
But to be heard.

We Have Not

(after “We Shall Overcome”)

We shall overcome—
That is what we sang.
We locked arms,
Lit candles,
Marched softly into nights
Thick with dogs and doubt.

And some did overcome.
Some bridges held.
Some laws changed.
Some doors opened.

But not all.

Not for everyone.
Not everywhere.
And not for long.

Some came after
And tore down the signs,
Or rewrote them in finer script.
Some left the door ajar
Just wide enough
To say it had been opened.

I do not mock the song.
I remember it.
In the bones.
In the breath held
Before a verdict.
In the quiet
After a child is buried.

We shall overcome—
We whispered it
When shouting would not do.

But the road is longer
Than the hymnbook said.
And the hill steeper
Than memory allows.

We have not.
Not yet.

Still—
There is something in the singing,
Even now.
Even if the words tremble.
Even if the chorus
Grows thin.

Of Goose and Grin: When Tales Step Off the Page

What happens when the characters tumble from their tales? When rhyme stumbles, and the Goose remembers? In this playful and poignant poem, nursery rhymes unravel, fairy tales awaken, and the stories themselves walk past their plots. “Once Upon Askew” is a whimsical reflection on the lives of stories—and those who dwell within them.

child reading book in front of shelves of books
Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.com

Once Upon Askew

or, The Story That Would Not Sit Still
by Donald S. Yarab

Listen, child—I am the Old Grey Goose,
And I was there when books came loose,
When volumes tumbled, pages flew,
And all the stories mixed like stew.

It started with a mighty thud—
Books falling open, words like mud,
All swirling, mingling, line by line,
Till Alice’s world came mixing into mine.

“Curiouser and curiouser!” she cried,
Right into Cow’s green pasture-side,
Where “Hey Diddle Diddle” used to play—
Now Cow asks questions all the day.

The Spoon caught Alice’s strange delight,
Abandoned dishes, fled by night,
Beneath a moon from whose bright story—
From Carroll’s tale or Goose’s glory?

I squawked from my own tumbled page—
Which book? What tale? What ancient age?
While Cat’s grin stretched across our scene,
Belonging nowhere, everywhere seen.

We passed the wall where once he sat—
Poor Humpty, puzzled, round, and flat.
Though patched, he watches, cracked but clear,
And murmurs, “Not all ends end in fear.”

But one lay still beyond the swirl—
A slumbering, untouched young girl.
The tales all passed; she did not wake,
No prince, no plot her trance to break.
Yet in her stillness, something stirred—
A dream not shaped by spoken word.

We found Red Riding Hood alone,
Her basket lost, her sure path gone.
The Wolf came next—not sly, but stunned,
As if unsure what he had done.
They walked apart, then side by side,
Two stories stripped of fear and pride,
Each wondering if what they knew
Was ever really, wholly true.

So off we walked, this mixed-up crew:
Alice with questions, Cow with moo
That carried wisdom, Spoon with light
From every moon and every night.

Behind us trailed the broken bits—
Half-rhymes and verbs that sought their fits,
Metaphors in mismatched dancing shoes,
Still seeking out their missing clues.

No longer bound by story’s rules,
We’d become something new, no fools—
Not quite the characters we’d been,
Not free of them—but in between.

And hovering above our band,
That smile from Cheshire’s distant land—
A grin that needs no cat to hold,
A question that will not be told.

This is what happens, child, you see,
When stories tumble, wild and free—
They find they’re more alike than not,
And walk together past their plot.

On the Nature of Moments

Some time ago—perhaps a year or more—I shared the thought with a friend that, in the absence of a life partner, career milestones, or the outward markers many associate with ongoing joy and fulfillment, I found myself sustained by something smaller, more elusive, yet no less profound: moments. Fleeting as they are, these glimpses—of joy, beauty, tenderness, or connection—carry a weight that lingers long after they pass. Whether in laughter with a friend, a burst of color in nature, the unexpected joy found in art and music, or the hush of shared silence, these moments are what remain.

This conversation was brought to mind earlier today, during a pause in some simple yard work. A robin—one I have come to recognize—perched beside me on a rock for nearly twenty minutes. He did not fly, only hopped, watching me as if we were resting together. That brief companionship, quiet and unexpected, brought back the full force of that earlier insight.

The poem that follows is a first, rough attempt to give shape to that reflection.

This robin, who kept me quiet company, reminded me of the beauty in small moments—and even allowed me, kindly, to take his portrait.
This robin, who kept me quiet company, reminded me of the beauty in small moments—and even allowed me, kindly, to take his portrait.

Moments

by Donald S. Yarab

After so long,
I see it now—
life is not the grand arc
we thought we were writing,
not triumph etched in time
or years stacked with care.
It is moments.

The held door,
a beat longer than required.
A cloud painting itself
across the sky.
A flower blooming
through a crack in concrete.

The hum of a bee,
the song of a bird,
a friend’s first hello—
welcome, familiar music in the air.
Laughter spilling like light
through a quiet room.

A touch that speaks
without language.
Sunlight flickering
through leaves—
nature’s own Morse code.
The warm drift from the kitchen:
garlic, hope,
onions, memory.

The first bite of something sweet
dissolving on the tongue.
The joy of someone you love
laughing till they snort,
till they can’t breathe,
till you’re laughing too
at nothing,
at everything.

These—
small rebellions
against the world’s weight:
its monotony, its cold indifference.

But the moments—
oh, they persist.
They slip through the cracks
of our hardest days
and remind us
why we stay,
why we watch,
why we dare to hope
for just one more:

one more kindness,
one more beauty,
one more laugh,
one more flicker of light—
each a defiance,
each a benediction
in this brief, bright,
impossible gift
of being alive.

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.