4 March 2018

Rowers are like scribes
writing on sheets of water,
rowers on the Nile
rowing in Arabic;
on the Yangtze, in Mandarin Chinese.
Oxford English is rowed on the Isis,
Cambridge English, on the Cam,
American English, on the Mississippi.
No one rows in Aramaic, anymore,
and few in Latin,
outside of ancient texts.
Even though a babbling
of tongues, they brook
misunderstanding
by the art of rowing itself,
a language, spoken,
wherever rowing is.

Philip Kuepper
(24 February 2018)