Losing a Language Explication
The speaker starts with “A breath leaves the sentences and does not come back.” This breath is an example of the words that people speak and the same words that the speaker will mourn over. Strangely, we are not given any information about the breath, even though it becomes the subject of the poem. It was simply mentioned in the very beginning and is now gone, and all we know is that it used to exist. This sets up the nostalgia that resonates in each line. Also, when something is lost, there is a chance that it may be found again, but the speaker lets readers know that it will not come back, creating a sense of loss and its finality. The choice to use “breath” is not insignificant. A single breath is light, delicate, unnoticeable, and vanishes quickly. The speaker may wish to convey the fragility of communication.
The first two lines essentially introduce the main conflicts that are present until the end of the poem. The speaker continues using words that illustrate irrevocability. In the second and third couplets, “no longer” shows up twice, and later readers see the word “nothing,” all of which adds to the idea that the words that were once known are absolutely gone. In addition, the speaker maintains the...
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