Babel-17

by Samuel R. Delany

She shook her head, shook it again. Dr. T’mwarba locked his fingers and leaned back. Suddenly Rydra said in an even voice: “Now I do have some idea of what you’re trying to say, dear, but you’ll have to put it in words yourself. That’s what you were about to say, Mocky, wasn’t it?” T’mwarba raised the white hedges of his eyebrows. “Yes. It was. You say you didn’t read my mind? You’ve demonstrated this to me a dozen times—” “I know what you’re trying to say; and you don’t know what I’m trying to say. It’s not fair!” She nearly rose from her seat. They said in unison: “That’s why you’re such a fine poet.” Rydra went on, “I know, Mocky. I have to work things out carefully in my head and put them in my poems so people will understand. But that’s not what I’ve been doing for the past ten years. You know what I do? I listen to other people, stumbling about with their half thoughts and half sentences and their clumsy feelings that they can’t express—and it hurts me. So I go home and burnish it and polish it and weld it to a rhythmic frame, make the dull colors gleam, mute the garish artificiality to pastels, so it doesn’t hurt anymore: that’s my poem. I know what they want to say, and I say it for them.” “The voice of your age,” said T’mwarba.