Poem about endangered languages. A language is dying as you read this. In fact, languages are dying at a rate of one per fortnight.

ScnØd: an explanation
by Gabriel Rosenstock

Translated from the Irish by Paddy Bushe

My name is Sklog.

I have lived almost ninety years.

Trillish is my mother tongue.

I am speaking into a machine.

I cannot write the language.

We never had the letters for Trillish.

My death will be

The death of Trillish.

Not another living soul knows it.

But these few words

Will be there for those to come

If they wish to hear.

We have words in Trillish

That I reckon others don’t have.

ScnØd, for example,

ScnØd mean . . . well, it’s complicated…

There’s a tree called the ko-eewa.

It blossoms only once every twenty years –

Beautiful red flowers.

It blossoms and then the flowers fall that same evening.

You can make a kind of tea from the leaves

That cures purple clouds in the mind.

Now, the meaning of ScnØd is this:

Imagine the sunrise blazing up on the horizon.

You look out and the ko-eewa is in blossom!

You begin to dance a few steps.

Stop! Look again!

Only sunlight on bare branches.

A phantasm. Then you look the other way.

You wouldn’t like to stare at something that’s not there.

The exact meaning of ScnØd:

The ko-eewa in blossom, apparently,

A little dance of joy, looking again at the tree

And looking away.

(Gabriel Rosenstock’s latest book of poems is Glengower: Poems for No One in Irish and English, published by The Onslaught Press, Oxford, UK)

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