You Have to be deaf to understand the deaf
What is it like to ”hear” a hand?
You have to be deaf to understand.
What is it like to be a small child,
In a school, in a room void of sound --
With a teacher who talks and talks and talks;
And then when she does come around to you,
She expects you to know what she’s said?
You have to be deaf to understand.
Or the teacher thinks that to make you smart,
You must first learn how to talk with your voice;
So mumbo-jumbo with hands on your face
For hours and hours without patience or end,
Until out comes a faint resembling sound?
You have to be deaf to understand.
What is it like to be curious,
To thirst for knowledge you can call your own,
With an inner desire that’s set on fire --
And you ask a brother, sister, or friend
Who looks in answer and says, ”Never Mind”?
You have to be deaf to understand.
What it is like in a corner to stand,
Though there’s nothing you’ve done really wrong,
Other than try to make use of your hands
To a silent peer to communicate
A thought that comes to your mind all at once?
You have to be deaf to understand.
What is it like to be shouted at
When one thinks that will help you to hear;
Or misunderstand the words of a friend
Who is trying to make a joke clear,
And you don’t get the point because he’s failed?
You have to be deaf to understand.
What is it like to be laughed in the face
When you try to repeat what is said;
Just to make sure that you’ve understood,
And you find that the words were misread --
And you want to cry out, ”Please help me, friend”?
You have to be deaf to understand.
What is it like to have to depend
Upon one who can hear to phone a friend;
Or place a call to a business firm
And be forced to share what’s personal, and,
Then find that your message wasn’t made clear?
You have to be deaf to understand.
What is it like to be deaf and alone
In the company of those who can hear --
And you only guess as you go along,
For no one’s there with a helping hand,
As you try to keep up with words and song?
You have to be deaf to understand.
What is it like on the road of life
To meet with a stranger who opens his mouth --
And speaks out a line at a rapid pace;
And you can’t understand the look in his face
Because it is new and you’re lost in the race?
You have to be deaf to understand.
What is it like to comprehend
Some nimble fingers that paint the scene,
And make you smile and feel serene,
With the ”spoken word” of the moving hand
That makes you part of the word at large?
You have to be deaf to understand.
What is it like to ”hear” a hand?
Yes, you have to be deaf to understand.
(Written at 1971 by Willard J. Madsen, professor of journalism at Gallaudet University. This poem was translated into seven different languages and reprinted in publications, including DEAF HERITAGE, p. 380.)
轉引自以下網站:
http://www.zak.co.il/deaf-info/old/poems.html#tounderstandThunk! A noisy world
(Contributed by Henry W. Meyerding hwm@halcyon.com at 23 Mar 1995.)
Thunk! A noisy world,
A world whose dinn you cannot escape
Surrounds you --- damn.
The wind claws you, the sea bellows,
The wrath of its roiled torrents
Are multimedia bazar.
The screeching of fowl -- You never escape the buzzard’s bark
The incessant twittering of idiot pests
Nor even the pounding of the woodpecker
For you this torture is.
Only a babble of incessant chatter, of thoughtless noise;
Or else, certainly you quiver
Attacked by booming resonant explosions
Ah, the jest of dynamite -- What ho the NITRO
Thunk again! Your wife’s nagging,
Full of certain rectitude for you it never ceases
Even your own name you ignore at every possible opportunity;
You know you’re as thick as a plank
To the astonishment of no one else.
Ah! you who Deaf!
Forget not all those foolish hearies
Cursed by an impossibility of silence
Incapable of coherant or determined cogitation in a world they define
To be most beneficial for themselves
They are doubly damnned.
Think! and forget them not.
When I started to parody this little tome, I didn’t know it was so LONG! I especially groaned at the splashing ripples!
Anyone else here remember the Desiderata? It was a homely little tome that someone claimed to have found on a gravestone somewhere. It was later porven to be a total fake, but not before National Lampoon got through with it and authored the ”Deteriorata.”
Take comfort amidst the toil of life
That your dog is finally getting enough cheese... etc
God bless her and all who sail in her...
Henry W. Meyerding
以上詩作轉引自:
http://www.zak.co.il/deaf-info/old/poems.html#tounderstand
