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Hommages poétiques

Is our language complete?

Notre langage est-il complet?
Jeffrey Wainwright
p. 29-34

Texte intégral

En hommage amical à René Gallet.

1.

1Is our language complete? Not on your life!
Not like H2SO4. Not like the law of sines
with its allowance for the ambiguous case.

But there is the hope

the one who hopes

for simple agreements,
perfect understanding
for nothing not ever irregular

In Stoke-on-Trent post-war we were very keen on Esperanto.
Here, where breathing could get difficult,
was an inspiration to get out the door,
to world peace, nation same-speaking peace unto nation,
so charas could criss-cross from Dresden to Dresden,
Burslem to Bialystok,
happy wanderers, buying pots of tea effortlessly,
and explaining the laws of cricket faultlessly
to Russians Germans Poles and Jews,
without an itch and with nary a crux word.

2.

2Is our language complete? No way José
exclamation point. For all the rolling off the tongue
words remain such dullards and their relations obscure.

I – wish – that – she – would – call.
Just tell me, if you can, how what I mean is there.
Or even in: I – do – wish – that – she - would – call.
Just tell me, if you can, how what I feel is there.
How do such, or any, sentences give forth,
bring into presence, stand in for, even resemble … ?
No way. But just watch them do it.

3.

3Is our language complete? Are you kidding?Very often. Which is part of the lack.
I can’t claim though that I am lied to often.
Even house-agents’ clerks do not say the thing-which-is-not
deliberately, they are just optimists
by training, and the ones I know, the press they get,
it’s hard not to sympathise. Would he really
leave a girl like that in her bed-sit in her nothings?
Could her executive comportment turn peevish,
even lead to murder in the master-bedroom?
I don’t know.

4.

4Is our language complete? You bet it is!
Name one thing it cannot do.
It can dawdle meaning-less-ly like this,
or be doing the same thing soul-ful-ly, if it says so,
drifting along the ramparts in a floaty dress,
the chalky hills [enter here] in the moonlight,
could be given anything to do,
as they were once said to skip.
The only question it has to ask itself
is how much is a sufficiency, elegant or otherwise?

5.

5Is our language complete? Well, you read the lines
lies in the last poem, decide for yourself.
In truth I stumble and cast about even when
I’m talking to myself. There are the best of tools
in the tidiest of racks under the stairs
and these words are not among them, nor – I hazard –
are there any such places words may be found.  
But do not despair – and that’s an order –
there are no angels and thus no perfect prattling,
and the painstaking repair of spiders’ webs
can be left to what’s best adapted.
As the nightingale with her sweet self she wrangles
we must just strive with our creature tongue.


***

6Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, #18: ‘… ask yourself whether our language is complete’.

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Jeffrey Wainwright, « Is our language complete? »Revue LISA/LISA e-journal, Vol. VII – n°3 | 2009, 29-34.

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Jeffrey Wainwright, « Is our language complete? »Revue LISA/LISA e-journal [En ligne], Vol. VII – n°3 | 2009, mis en ligne le 19 mai 2009, consulté le 28 mars 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/lisa/72 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/lisa.72

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Auteur

Jeffrey Wainwright

Professor, (Manchester, UK)
In March 2008, Jeffrey Wainwright retired as Professor in the Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he taught at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, to write full-time. He gives public readings and talks about poetry. Jeffrey Wainwright’s latest book of poems, Clarity or Death!, was published in 2008 by Carcanet, following Out of the Air (1999), The Red-Headed Pupil (1994), and Selected Poems (1985). Students delight in his Poetry the Basics (Routledge, 2004). His critical writings include Acceptable Words: Essays on the Poetry of Geoffrey Hill (2005), and he has also published translations of plays by Péguy, Claudel, Corneille and Koltès. For eleven years, he was northern theatre critic for The Independent, reviewing productions from Birmingham to Lancaster. He has also contributed to BBC Radio arts programmes. He first encountered René Gallet at a meeting of the Amitié Charles Péguy in Paris.

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