Steve Berman Potery

In the Beginning – day 509

was the word
but that’s King James
the word John spoke
was λογοσ or in latin
letters logos which Jerome
made into verbum
and Tyndale translated
to the English worde
so I ask myself what might
have fallen out in these translations?
the Greek logos from the verb legein
is to speak, to tell, but deeper still
to gather, to select, to choose, to pluck
speech as gathering of sounds
plucked from the mind
then the Beginning was a gathering
of proto words
the atoms, wheeling dust clouds
that made the first stars
whose fires forged the elements
speaking the life to be
amoebas, jellyfish and salamanders
mushrooms and redwood trees
and in time ourselves
but what of verbum/word? the oldest root
we know is PIE *were
meaning to call, to speak, to name
to summon forth
which tells me the Beginning is still underway
as we begin to name
the still unspoken world
we’re being summoned to create
along with what it is
in us that even now
is issuing the summons

Steve Berman
December 27, 2021

” It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Greek legein “to say, tell, speak, declare; to count,” originally, in Homer, “to pick out, select, collect, enumerate;” lexis “speech, diction;” logos “word, speech, thought, account;” Latin legere “to gather, choose, pluck; read,” lignum “wood, firewood,” literally “that which is gathered,” legare “to depute, commission, charge,” lex “law” (perhaps “collection of rules”); Albanian mb-ledh “to collect, harvest;” Gothic lisan “to collect, harvest,” Lithuanian lesti “to pick, eat picking;” Hittite less-zi “to pick, gather.”

verb “a word that asserts or declares; that part of speech of which the office is predication, and which, either alone or with various modifiers or adjuncts, combines with a subject to make a sentence” [Century Dictionary], late 14c., from Old French verbe “word; word of God; saying; part of speech that expresses action or being” (12c.) and directly from Latin verbum “verb,” originally “a word,” from PIE root *were- (3) “to speak” (source also of Avestan urvata- “command;” Sanskrit vrata- “command, vow;” Greek rhētōr “public speaker,” rhetra “agreement, covenant,” eirein “to speak, say;” Hittite weriga- “call, summon;” Lithuanian vardas “name;” Gothic waurd, Old English word “word”). “