The original Semitic aleph-beth...established a character, or letter, for each of the consonants of the language. The vowels, the sounded breath that must be added to the written consonants in order to make them come alive and to speak...

The utter simplicity of this technical innovation was such that the early Semitic aleph-beth, in which were written down the various stories and histories that were later gathered into the Hebrew Bible, was adopted not only by the Hebrews but by the Phonecians..., the Aramaeans, the Greeks, the Romans, and indeed eventually gave rise (directly or indirectly) to virtually every alphabet known, including that which I am currently using to scribe these words.

(- The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram)

Listen to Dari poetry

The innovation which gave rise to the alphabet was ... developed by the Semitic tribes around 1500BCE. It consisted in recognizing that almost every syllable of their language was composed of one or more silent consonantal elements plus an element of sounded breath-

that which we call a vowel...

(- The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram)

Listen to and learn Persian vowels

At eight in the morning all those leaves are born

We'll have fruit in place of all those stars

Songs from the Caribbean


- Vicente Huidobro

It was the time when my eyelids opened without wings

And I began to sing above unleashed distances

Going out from their nests
                                         Flags shatter the air

- Vicente Huidobro

In the African desert The giraffes want to swallow the moon

You mustn't look
                            Behind walls
Curiousity will make your neck long

- Vicente Huidobro

From OUT OF AFRICA by Isak Dinesen (1885-1962), chapter titled "Kamante and Lulu," page 83:

"If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?"

Make a POEM like nature makes a tree...

- Vicente Huidobro

Oh Poets, why sing of roses! Let them flower in your poems...

For us alone
Do all things live beneath the Sun.

The poet is a little God.

- Vicente Huidobro

...and suddenly I saw the heavens unfastened and open, planets, palpitating plantations, shadow perforated, riddled with arrows, fire and flowers, the winding night, the universe.

...And I, infinitesimal being, drunk with the great starry void, likeness, image of mystery, felt myself a pure part of the abyss, I wheeled with the stars, my heart broke loose on the wind.

( -Pablo Neruda)

Listen to Neruda

...I did not know what to say, my mouth had no way with names, my eyes were blind, and something started in my soul, fever or forgotten wings...

...and I made my way, deciphering that fire, and I wrote the first faint line, faint, without substance, pure nonsense, pure wisdom of someone who knows nothing...

(Pablo Neruda)

...Poetry arrived in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where it came from, from winter or a river.

I don't know how or when, no, they were not voices, they were not words, nor silence, but from a street I was summoned, from the branches of night, abruptly from the others, among violent fires or returning alone, there I was without a face, and it touched me.

(Pablo Neruda)