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Spelling
作者Author  /  Margaret  Atwood  瑪格莉特.愛特伍德

Spelling

 
 
 
My daughter plays on the floor
with plastic letters,
red, blue & hard yellow,
learning how to spell,
spelling,                       5
how to make spells.
 
I wonder how many women
denied themselves daughters,
closed themselves in rooms,
drew the curtains                   10
so they could mainline words.
 
A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child.
there is no either/or.
However.                      15
 
I return to the story
of the woman caught in the war
& in labour, her thighs tied
together by the enemy
so she could not give birth.                     20
 
Ancestress: the burning witch,
her mouth covered by leather
to strangle words.
 
A word after a word
after a word is power.                      25
 
At the point where language falls away
from the hot bones, at the point
where the rock breaks open and darkness
flows out of it like blood, at
the melting point of granite                  30
when the bones know
they are hollow & the word
splits & doubles & speaks
the truth & the body
itself becomes a mouth.                   35
 
This is a metaphor.
 
How do you learn to spell?
Blood, sky & the sun,
your own name first,
your first naming, your first name,                    40
your first word.
 
   
Annotation
 

行數

註釋

6

make spell 下咒語

11

mainline 靜脈注射,通常使用於急救藥物或毒品注射,通常能夠有效並迅速發揮功效。

26

fall away 縮小、疏遠

26-35

說明當語言逐漸沸騰揮發其複雜多重作用以述實,身體也可能成為發言表達的工具。

36

metaphor 隱喻

40

name 作名詞意為名字;作動詞為命名、指名或列舉的意思

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