Sound’s What Counts

Vandal Poem of the Day: March 4, 2020

 by Elizabeth Arnold

in beautiful green Kerala

where the people sing like birds
—they make those

sounds I mean—

and the mantras there
like birdsong, no sense,

passed down generation to generation

as they’re
taught to the monks

with an impossible exactitude,

translation being in this case
transliteration

so as to get into the air

here and in other places all over India
and the world

words of the god, the actual

sounds it is believed
a living entity let out and in an

instant made the world.

from LifeFind more by Elizabeth Arnold at the library
Copyright ©  Elizabeth Arnold

Used with the permission of Flood Editions.

Published in Elizabeth Arnold Poems

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