A Different History Great Pan is not dead; he simply emigrated to India. Here, the gods roam freely, disguised as snakes or monkeys; every tree is sacred and it is a sin to be rude to a book. It is a sin to shove a book aside with your foot, a sin to slam books down hard on a table, a sin to toss one carelessly across a room. You must learn how to turn the pages gently without disturbing Sarasvati, without offending the tree from whose wood the paper was made. 2 Which language has not been the oppressor's tongue? Which language truly meant to murder someone? And how does it happen that after the torture, after the soul has been cropped with a long scythe swooping out of the conqueror's face - the unborn grandchildren grow to love that strange language. NOTE Search for my Tongue: The material in brackets ( ) is a phonetic transcription of the modified Devanagari script which is used to write Gujrati and other Asian languages that appears above each line in the original published piece. A Different History: Great Pan: Greek nature god (cf. pantheism) Sarasvati: Hindu goddess of knowledge
A Different History Great Pan is not dead; he simply emigrated to India. Here, the gods roam freely, disguised as snakes or monkeys; every tree is sacred and it is a sin to be rude to a book. It is a sin to shove a book aside with your foot, a sin to slam books down hard on a table, a sin to toss one carelessly across a room. You must learn how to turn the pages gently without disturbing Sarasvati, without offending the tree from whose wood the paper was made. 2 Which language has not been the oppressor's tongue? Which language truly meant to murder someone? And how does it happen that after the torture, after the soul has been cropped with a long scythe swooping out of the conqueror's face - the unborn grandchildren grow to love that strange language. NOTE Search for my Tongue: The material in brackets ( ) is a phonetic transcription of the modified Devanagari script which is used to write Gujrati and other Asian languages that appears above each line in the original published piece. A Different History: Great Pan: Greek nature god (cf. pantheism) Sarasvati: Hindu goddess of knowledge
2014%20Poetry%20Assignment%20-%20Yr%209%20-%20Poetry%20from%20Other%20Cultures%20and%20Traditions.docx