LETTERS AND SOUNDS
Shihabüddin Fazlullah spoke with thirty two letters and did not have a soul. He believed in letters and earned a living knitting skull caps. It is said he saw every letter in the human face. In the Zeyl he wrote to Cavidan (which hasn’t been found), he assigned the letter A to sky; to water: C (water is from Thales); to death: U (Death is a bit U). To fire: Z.
The world was the letter, all forms. Sophocles, who, like Pythagoras, did not know how to draw, was also of the letter, as was the cricket, and Mohammed too.
Mohammed (whom we know, spoke with twenty eight letters and had a soul and no bird could ever have flown to where he did) gave ear to sounds. He listened only to them. Everything was sound. Heaven and Hell were sound. A peacock was sound. If Tu Fu rode to Rice Pudding Mountain to graze his horse, it was sound. Which is why he always felt a void between the soul and the forms. And why he seldom wrote. Why should he? Language is lonely. It doesn’t speak. The universe is more talkative than us, he said. More leaf-filled. The sun speaks with images. A tree works noisily. So does a stone. Night descends in noise. The universe is sound.
“The alphabet is a peddler.”
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The link: http://bulentjournal.com/ilhan-berk-prose-poems/
