Suppose we don’t need sound to talk—
suppose that nutcase Swedenborg
was right that angels banter not

in language but in balls of thought
wafting about like pollen spores
because they don’t need sound to talk?

Think how in dreams our dialogue
flashes from mind to mind before
it’s voiced, communicated not

in language, but its building blocks:
Chinese-poem metaphors
ideogrammed to the brain, not talked.

Who needs the langue d’oeil or d’oc
when we (like modern troubadours)
strum on lutelike keyboards not

quite sentences or finished thoughts
but runic clusters, bluesy chords
understood (though apart from talk)
like angel banter they can’t be not.

Julie Kane
from her book Rhythm & Booze
University of Illinois Press, 2003

used with permission of the poet