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Wednesday, March 23, 2016

SEARCHING WORDS FOR IT

by Cally Conan-Davies



Getty image via DW.



English. It isn’t all Greek. But a lot of it is,
maybe 60%, or more in the sciences.
But let’s not put a figure on it. Today
I’m thinking about the word ‘ecology’.
Basically, it’s your house, oikos. Unfortunately,
if that gets bombed, and you have to move away,

and there may not be a mother or a father or a door
about which a mother or father might say
‘were you born in a tent?’
to shame you every time you forget to shut it,
you must strive, especially when your new tongue is unstable,
to explain how your life is a ‘very high degree of miserable’
now that you shave the hair of your child for nits,
the child by the wire fence too tired to cry,
now that you wait and live in mud and shit
and the cold, quiet child is innocent,
and the settled world you seek is unsettling.


Cally Conan-Davies is a writer who lives by the sea.