Bad Poetry: The Native Wisdom of the Dative

Does everyone see me making a silly face at the mere possibility of pretentiousness in this post? Yes, it’s about a kernel of wisdom I relate to two unrelated linguistic observations.

1. “Giving”is a verb that ought to call our attention to the activity the verb describes, not to a noun; the image of giving inspired many languages’ special noun forms, which are called dative, from Latin dat, meaning “gives.”

2. And yes, I think the idea that any ethnic group has a special inside corner on wisdom is pretty silly. So is the idea that all or most native speakers of any language go around constantly being mindful of the way their language seems to encode a bit of wisdom...However, in some languages, most conspicuously including Native American languages and also including Latin, giving happens. The object of giving is the gift. The act of giving is asymmetrical, but mutual. Latin has not only the special dative case but also the phrase do ut des, which means "I give in order that thou givest."

I think pretentiousness is silly. The post wanted to be a free-verse “poem,” and actually I think free-verse “poems” are inherently a bit pretentious too. “I don’t HAVE to go to the trouble of fitting my thoughts into a form, verse or prose! They’re a POem just because I SAID so!” Free verse is thus alien to the spirit of Bad Poetry, which may be good, may be bad, the poet is too close to it to judge, but in any case it’s not pretentious. These thoughts form short sentences that parallel each other but don’t fit a consistent structure of meter, rhyme, assonance, consonance, or alliteration. They are free verse, as distinct from a prose rant, because they do have (loose) patterns of sound and rhythm, and of imagery.

Trigger warning: This poem draws one of its dominant images from a Bible story...I'm still using the laptop that no longer has enough memory to run Chrome. Firefox won't do Amazon photo links. If it would, the book linked to this poem would be the Bible.

To a child learning English, she said,

a mother says, “Look! Ball!”

To a child learning Navajo,

a mother says, “Look! Bouncing!”

Most nouns are really verb forms;

most things are known for what they often do

and if you find them doing something different

you might call them by completely different names.

I think of this when I think of words like “giving”

and “giver” and... “Give-ee?” “Taker?” “Recipient?” Bad bad bad.

The only way around those misfit words

is “Look! Giving!”

like “Look! Dancing!”

or “Look! Handshaking!”

The noun for the objective form of “giving”

is “gift,” the object.

There’s a special word for the structure of sentences with “giving.”

If one person is the subject, the one doing the giving,

and another person is named, that person

is off on the side in a separate case: the dative,

the special word for the one with the gift in the hands,

because the object is the object;

the person is the subject of another question:

does person complete the act of giving,  or not?

The complete act of giving is reciprocal.

The person named in the dative phrase is the other giver

or the taker who breaks the act of giving.

Perhaps when we meditate on the grammar of giving words,

the way the act of giving creates the special case

that was identified specifically with giving

hundreds of years before the time of Christ,

we see what’s wrong with the idea of structures for “giving.”

Giving is alive, and lively, like dancing

and reciprocal, and ongoing, like handshaking

or making babies, but we don’t talk about that online.

“Who is giving?”

“Two are giving.”

The earth gives food to us

and we give compost to the earth.

The female gives pleasure to the male

and the male gives motherhood to the female.

The mother gives milk to the infant

and the infant gives comfort to the mother.

All giving in nature is a cycle

until we come to the Fall of Man:

Cain sank into envy,

as his brother revelled in giving,

that circle from which Cain had fallen out.

When we want to do all the giving,

not to be part of a cycle,

our faces grow ugly as Cain’s did

and we live out Original Sin.

There is forgiveness

for giving amiss:

When a mother human, through illness,

neither gives milk nor receives comfort

in the natural cycle with her infant,

mother cows show no reluctance

to make their own place in that dance,

though the women grow fat and depressive,

the babies imperfectly nourished,

and humankind’s relationship to cowkind

dithers between worship and abuse.

But even Love Itself can hardly endure

the spirit of Original Sin that brays,

“I will give what I choose to give, to whom I choose,

without respect to a cycle, but as I please!”

We think, in the fever-dreams of Original Hubris,

“Give to the poor?

We’ll build ourselves great structures that manage the poor

out of whatever we don’t want for ourselves:

fruit left from our surfeit, the seeds and the compost,

to our Lord in the poor, rather than to the earth.”

“Give to our elders?

We’ll build more structures to tell them what they need.

We’ll call them what we feel like calling them,

and when. We’ll give what we don’t want for ourselves.

We’re not their heirs; we’re separate new creations.”

“Give to the ones we love, after our sick fashion?

We’ll give them all that the merchants tell us to buy

but not the mindfulness, not the discernment

to live with them in a constant dance of love.

As a result our love will wear out soon

and men grow old, neither with the wives

of their youth, nor their children—nor in the same towns.”

We are not struck down at once; there is forgiveness.

We are dragged away, in greed’s chains, out of the dance.

Our structures vomit food-products no one can eat

and “housing” where no one can choose to live

to rot, not even compost, on the ground

while rich and poor learn to despise each other

and the earth and the farmers make each other ill

and parents and children, who cannot not give to each other,

give hate, spiritual murder, even real murder.

We need, oh how we need, to work our way back

to mothers giving milk and infants comfort.

“Governments to do giving? Who says that,

who let him out, and who is taking him back?”

Governments can store material reserves, against emergencies.

When the flood or plague or drought comes, then the people

can claim their share of what they’ve stored for themselves.

Giving we can, we must, do for ourselves.

Money collected by tax-gatherers

is stolen or demanded, but not given.

Goods handed out through “programs” and through “systems”

may be distributed, but are not given.

Giving is a private, intimate dance

where two or three, but rarely more, take part.

To think of giving without the cycle’s madness.

Without a cycle, who’d know what to give?

A Welfare State leaves all outcasts, like Cain,

wandering in a wilderness of envy

with never a clue to what it is we’ve lost;

only the sense of loss, great loss, forever.

Where people are givers, they take care of their own.

To the less privileged they give wages

and the less privileged give, in return, labor.

Welfare programs are for the sons of Cain.

The children of Abel dance.