Arrows and Words

By Julia Margaret Cameron - http://www.geh.org/ne/mismi3/cameron_sum00001.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=836438

The Arrow and the Song

I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For who has sight so keen and strong, That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow **********

Such a simple poem that makes so much contemporary sense. Most of us fortunately do not face real arrows, or even real physical violence. But humans, the way they are, are capable of inflicting violence through words - with or without.

Violence with words used as shrapnel through mouths and through social media. Instant messaging apps work as missiles, carrying words as their explosives. There often seems to be no wall of discretion standing between the agitated mind and the hurriedly typing fingers!

And violence without words - deliberate hurtful silences, and deliberate support to violence and wrongdoing by using silence as a weapon - violence by omission if not by commission, silences hurled as arrows.

Sometimes, as strange as it may seem, it turns out these arrows are just being passed on. Arrows stay unbroke as the poet says. One grabs an arrow that hurts and hurls it towards another. And every time an arrow is grabbed and pulled out it deepens the wound and unfortunately these wounds never heal. One wound leads to another and another to still another...

And the songs that the poet talks about? Do they even exist now? Or are they all part of lore, lost in the agony of wounds inflicted by words? **********

The words in songs Are the very words that make an arrow Could we bring back the songs For a peaceful tomorrow?