K Satchidanandan (India)

​STAMMER
 
Stammer is no handicap.
It is a mode of speech.
 
Stammer is the silence that falls
between the word and its meaning,
just as lameness is the
silence that falls between
the word and the deed.
 
Did stammer precede language
or succeed it?
Is it only a dialect or
a language itself?
These questions make
the linguists stammer.
 
Each time we stammer
we are offering a sacrifice
to the God of meanings.
 
When a whole people stammer
stammer becomes their mother-tongue:
just as it is with us now.
 
God too must have stammered
when He created man.
That is why all the words of man
carry different meanings.
That is why everything he utters
from his prayers to his commands
stammers,
like poetry.
 
2002