Word

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There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.


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 – Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
 – The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain [1952], st. I

Without another word spoken on either side, the lodger took from his great trunk, a kind of temple, shining as of polished silver, and placed it carefully on the table.

'Right again, quite right,' said Mr Swiveller, 'caution is the word, and caution is the act.'

We had words. Each and every evening.

Sometimes, when he stopped for beer after work, we had dishes and pots and food, too.

LI

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

--The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
(trans. Edward Fitzgerald, 1st ed.)

And then some more words come along and a paragraph is born.

My favourite word in the English language is »language«. However, if you gave me a slightly larger set of words to choose from I might have more difficulty expressing a preference.

What I feel for you,
I can't put in words,
language won't hold
my desire.

Words derive their meaning from the surrounding words, just as human beings derive their meaning from interacting with other humans around them.

The old folks say that the spoken word is the garment of the soul. What man of true wit would clothe his beloved in filth and tatters?

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Words like winter snowflakes.

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 – Homer (c. 700 B.C.)
 – The Iliad, bk. III, l. 222

A word has the power to define, to bind, to create, to destroy. Truely, a poet has power undreamt of by kings.

The word is powerless yet powerful. The word can be a mere 8 bits, or the flame that burns a city to the ground. Words sting, caress, re-assure, and destruct.

We become wordsmiths innately, learning language before we learn to walk or talk. And still, we continue our development, our love affair with words, until the day we die.

»Therefore« is a word the poet must not know.

(Andre Gide)