Friday, September 14, 2007

how apt that your name should mean "new house" (etymologically originating in the Basque exaberri or etxe berri in standard spelling).

you have been a home to this wanderer.

. . .

The Giving of Names
Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas

I slice the triangle-wedges
From a wheel of Brie as she watches.
"More, more," she urges, her small
Breath warm at my elbow. I cut the wheel
Till what's left is a three o'clock hole.

At three, last year, for lack of words
She called these soft wedges
-- Triangles cut from circles--
"Square cheese," and the name's stuck
Like the smooth subtlety of Brie
Upon the palate. Croissants, flaky arches,
She named "rainbow bread," many-tasting
And ephemeral and never enough. "Enough?"
I ask; a sigh as big as a small child's need--
Greed is as honest and precise
In a young child's eyes
As in the mouth
That tastes the words and gives
Names to what it hungers after:

In younger times, when we
Were closer to what we think
Of now as truth,
To name a thing was to own
Its power, to taste
The first keen edge of knowledge
On the tongue, and consume it,
Or be consumed.

isea @ 3:28 PM