Language and Speech (A)

To Speak the Body of We

Language says to Life,
Give me your sounds of atrophy and pain,
Your sounds of growth and joy,
Your sounds of struggle to be--
Free of pretense and greed--
Sounds of your primal, pure identity.

Give me sounds of Life attaining to Being,
Echoing round, and on to speech;
As Life evolves its charted strife
With Soul into self-conscious being;
As the heart leaves the self of I
Joining the bond of We, in social life,
Searching to speak our needings' Why.

And the body of Life and Being,
Organismic-Earth, says to language,
You are not needed here,
But are welcome, if you come to speak
More deeply than, "Listen to me":
If you come to know
The condition of your being,
And to speak the body of We.

(from Ch XI, "Ecopoetry" The Last Human Spring