No Sacred Cows

[e_ndrus]

I should’ve written a poem in my language, I guess
The problem is I don’t really know which one
Whatever I write is essentially
Bits and pieces
That’s what poetry stands for, doesn’t it?
Bits
Well, that’s how we transfer information
Especially true as you are reading it in a digital form
Pieces
That’s how we structure poems
So what you get is bits and pieces
Written in one of the languages of my species
It is not my mother tongue
That one is being taken care of
By the second law of thermodynamics
Generation after generation
It is gradually degenerating
Dissolving
Falling into disorder
Still alive
But struggling
Hoping not to vanish too soon
Actually, I take it back
There is no reason to anthropomorphize a language
It is not a living being
It is not alive like a human or a cat
Essentially it is just a tool to transfer bits
In a humanly intelligible way
In fact
One language can be more efficient than another
Can be richer in vocabulary
Can be clearer
Can have easier grammar
A language is not a sacred cow
Don’t you think
The world would be more peaceful
If all humans spoke one common language
And yet
We cherish our languages
Our cultures
Our traditions
For better or for worse
They make us what we are
Or so we think
It seems to me
It is the other way round
We make them what they are
We make our languages
Our cultures
And traditions
They are in our hands
They can be changed
In fact they do
They are in constant flux
And that is good
That’s progress