Poem of the week: Alingual

I aligned myself with the silence of stone –
absolute, beyond breath, beyond the touch
of any Other than the ground beneath, my tongue
another slab of polished granite in a row.

I aligned myself with the silence of the woods
in the moments after birdsong fades at dusk,
their song still ringing in my inner ear, untellable
as the loss I could not find a tune for.

I aligned myself with a silence underground,
the unheeded vibrations beneath the rustle of leaves:
creep of fungus, push-and-shove of new shoots,
the exhalation of sleeping badgers beneath the roots.

I aligned myself with an unworded world, shed
the old songs, the false promise to protect of clothes
and walked bare-skinned out of the woods and felt the rain
pelt on my pelt; lifted my face to drink

with a tongue of flesh that throbbed
with tongue-thirst and tongue-urge
and drank in the silence that untied it
and did not taste of salt.

Lorna Shaughnessy is a poet, translator and editor. She has published five books of poetry, most recently Lark Water (Salmon Poetry, 2021), and translated four collections of Mexican and Spanish poetry. She is also a co-founding editor of Macha Press. lornashaughnessy.com