Trade

– Can I get you something?
— No I’ve just come to observe the ritual.
Blink
– Right.
Return
The tapping of keys
The forming of the words
Computational cycles
– Any particular reason?
Stare
— No.
Stare
— Not really.
Memories of the words
Of touch
Scent and skin
The feeling of hair
Shiver of the muscles
Exhale
The words that come
Years later
The soup-cycle never-ending
Chronology now means something else
Something closer to the citizens
— I noticed that.
And I nod
Nothing is Strange any more
Language attempts to be the line
Facilitated by translation
But the meaning of translation has changed
— You won’t be able to explain it.
I look at the words
– Indeed.
There comes the dawn
The memories of mechanical process
And here before the words I am observed
I am being translated
Piece by piece
Removed
Away from pragmatism
Away from intelligence
The cunning of survival
The developing of motor-skills
Pattern recognition
Establishment
Everything changes
And language becomes as relevant as it is irrelevant
— I guess there are dialects. I don’t know. You could try.
And I think
– I don’t want to push it.
Let it be
Evolve
Each translation raises the wall
Widens the gulf
Permission is very much out of my hands
I think about the words
What they mean
What they have meant in the past
And how they change
– Rituals indeed.
I hear the exhale
Then continue the action
Observed