Private Deixis

Private deixis

Ana Paula Arendt

I’m stretching my body

in yoga movements.

Suddenly, the verses stretch too,

reaching where they hit the most:

The inner ground

where all poems

are already written.

So many people in the world

hide their deixis

in objective speech,

working hard to conceal their view

–outsourcing others to express it,

torn from their selves…

They were punished

when they expressed their inner being

and they never recovered into remaining—

never felt safe to argue,

never allowed to stand for their own being.

Then comes the search for oneself

in what others call valuable.

Year after year

they forget simply to be and to long,

only to suddenly reveal

their repressed inner face—

like water finding no channel—

when they are given power

or subtracted power.

While nothing breaks the surface

and we are free to let our selves be,

one hesitates,

one shares, feeling for one’s own thought

like tides reading the moon

to find a common sound—

we are kept from the hardness of a stone…

When one never forswears that need—

the right of the other to be other…

Until power becomes the answer.

Until power sets like poured concrete,

hardening, sealing the ground,

forbidding forgiveness, understanding, and compassion

from growing as those soft tendrils of the human mind…

Where have they gone—

the minds rooted in the heart…?

Where have they gone,

those who would offer their seat

in search of the unknown?

Power…

The answer and the order

of those who renounced being.

Having cast off any fear of reproach,

comes the permanent promise of ambition.

Hiding and destroying deixis

order expands,

order exceeds,

order insists—

until nothing checks it.

It moves on

as ambition, as repetition.

A practiced calm of certainty.

And there are those who know nothing,

yet seek to proclaim that order.

Next, those who hold power

claim they are not responsible.

That is the plain contradiction

to survive in power—

until prison, until war,

until all land, all memory, all words

are left behind.

When fear of mistakes gives way,

power becomes duty,

duty becomes habit,

and habit no longer asks—

it simply goes on as empty ambition.

Chamber of hollow return,

where echoes have no source,

where they no longer find themselves.

I see people come and go

in search of themselves

stifling their selves

until they are lost…

And I am not outside this.

Even here,

stretching toward a center…

Part of me went with them

and I watch for them.

Part of them lives in me

when I search for other answers.

But let my self be there

where I have always been:

reprehended until accepted.

I choose a position:

call it ground,

as if it were not already marked

by where I stand.

I stay where I am—

just here, around you:

where speech meets

the place of its thought,

and cannot quite separate.

And while we are friends

may I always be honest with you:

power loses its bearing

and so

I prefer to speak from myself.

Let me see the fortress of your being

covered in flowers, trees growing from crevices.

And let me learn from my findings—

the poetical justice.

Let me find all my junctures

inside truth…

Let me tell you about

this place where all poems are written,

where I know each person—

even in oblivion—

is one of a kind;

where I recognize each person,

where I have met them all before.

(From the Pink Book of Passion).

Many thanks to Murlee, Prandip and Amirtha for their friendship, company, pictures and classes of Tamil! 🤗