THE GIFT OF TONGUES
Everything I steal, I give away.
Once, in pines almost as tall as these,
same crescent moon sliding gently by,
I sat curled on my knees, smoking with a friend,
sipping tea, swapping Coyote tales and lies.
He said something to me
about words, that each is a name,
and that every name is God's. I who have
no god sat in the vast emptiness silent
as I could be. A way that can be named
is not the way. Each word reflects
the Spirit which can't be named. Each word
a gift, its value in exact proportion
to the spirit in which it is given.
Thus spoken, these words I give
by way of Lao Tzu's old Chinese, stolen
by a humble thief twenty-five centuries later.
The Word is only evidence of the real:
in the Hopi tongue, there is no whale;
and, in American English, no Fourth World.
--Sam Hamill ~
"The Gift of Tongues," for me, voices a certain generosity of spirit that I admire, a certain spiritual perspective or dilemma that I sometimes inhabit.
Hamill's poem also speaks to the linkages of appropriation and use that ought to be infused with that sense of generosity in ways that parallel, say, Gary Snyder in his poem "Axe Handles" and in his life as well.
Hamill's poem came up in a conversation with a friend about piracy, Internet and media piracy in context, but generally piracy vs. theft and piracy vs. copying. I quoted the above poem's opening line--"Everything I steal, I give away"--to highlight what I feel is the proper generous spirit of Internet sharing, say, or of classroom teaching. Give credit where credit is due, certainly, and encourage everyone to seek out the originals in whatever format, whatever venue. (I quote Shakespeare or Byron in part to foster an interest in, a curiosity about, such writers.)
Piracy lacks such a generous spirit, despite all the attractive emblems of the piratical.
"Take what you can."
"And give nothing back."
--those sentiments belong at best in a Hollywood fantasy, not the real world.
And while I love those lines in the moment of watching that first Pirates of the Caribbean film, I think part of the charm of such costumed and indulgent selfishness comes from context, as ever. These are down-and-out, though irrepressible ne'er-do-wells--Captain Jack Sparrow and his first mate, Mr. Gibbs--and such voicing of the pirate's code is as much fantasy-projection for them as it is for most of us in the audience. The lines would have a much different flavor being spoken by Wall Street bankers and brokers, suited up but ties loosened, perhaps, with whiskeys in hand.
Sam Hamill, Destination Zero: Poems 1970-1995,
White Pine Press: Fredonia, New York, 1995.
The poster presented at the top is self-expressive, a wonderful promotional tool and work of art for a worthy anthology from an excellent publishing house: Copper Canyon Press. In that particular anthology I first encounted Hamill's poem quoted above, though I have just reread and presented the poem from Hamill's volume Destination Zero.
