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Metalingual Function

What was a father before the silence of arrested growth? What was a father
before a border grew cancerous in the gut--this labyrinth minus the mythic
allusion? What was a sign before a place? Before this ribbed epistle (here
Adam emerges from the rib of Eve). You pass me a shovel; there was never a
torch, never haughty blood, just this lacuna, a space between you and you.

You pass me a shovel, never was there a flame, or you to blame, but this
country, Pakistan, this border axle of his/tory cogged by the bones of
stories still speaking; in the space within the blood, the sap of a family tree
that longs for you as you existed before your arrested growth. This narrative
devoid of sequence; our language speaking somewhere else; a sentence which
wraps itself around the neck and confesses at last.

The metalingual function often stems from a disruption in the

communication-process. When two or more figures speak different

languages, there are often many utterances with metalingual function.

With different languages I mean two things. First when two figures

really speak two languages and secondly is when two figures use

different codes within one language such as dialects, sociolects and

idiolects. (Although none of this occurs in Sweeney Todd I have to

mention it for the sake of completeness.)

Confessing is a spitting out, never an absorption, in the land--it
floods, it was never the flood; how a person could wend in colloquial
English, absorb, or attempt to absorb this red hill in Tamil Nadu. Aruna/achala
reads hill of fire. What was Vedanta before Vedanta; Islam before Islam was
"salam." This land where you were kicked loose from, before a crow; you caw
now. You could speak and you are speaking now in a bone bowl. Muffled. The
rafters are loose on this house, in this house, these maniac walls, the rafts
sail in a sea of blood--we are 1947.

I found a bone bowl on the edge of the Ganges, before the Ganges was named,
when it was one river which imaged itself from the Himalayas, or the Hindu
Kush--a muffled voice. The cheering when you gave a speech for the formation of
Pakistan--you now take back--attempt to. This river flows; that is all we can
say. What is this land where I was born (Canada) before it becomes a sheath,
before it is published in an anthology of poems; before the aboriginals;
before--we are passing shrouds and shovels.

Now this Aruna hill (read fire) clocked by Shiva--to tackle it and climb it.
Shaved head and peeling, the scalp in gray webbed patterns. Flecking in dust
upon dust without a name, but with quiet respect, I spit off a waterfall; his
dhoti torn by thorns he couldn't name. Westerners vomit in angular lines,
eating Dahl and rice off banana leaves. I am one of them am I of
them who am I that I of who is no answer.

The metalingual function is associated with the code and is only present

in a latent form. It only steps into the foreground when the verbal code

used is implicitly or explicitly developed as a central theme. This often

stems from a disruption in the communication-process; for example, if two

different 'languages' are used of if two different codes within one

language are used.

He arrived at the cave (Skanda ashram). The cave which mucked beauty by its
silence, which defied and unnerved the Yasmin garlands around Lakshmi. He
wanted to e/merge from silence--a sort of father tomb or womb. But you passed
him a shovel to pick at the lock of bones; curse of the blood, that was the
shame--to find you with hind sight, with bat blood that brooded into 1947
when you crossed, you are crossing this border. That border is this border. To
pick axe through the granite underneath the found/ation of a house in Canada
which exists in space, this border--without an axis, already timeless beams,
swathed in your mute vocables. That was the shame. Thank you kindly for the
door--exited in space.

MRS. LOVETT: Now let's see...we've got tinker.

TODD:(Looks at it) Something pinker.

MRS. LOVETT: Tailor?

TODD:(Shakes his head) Something - paler

MRS. LOVETT: Potter?

TODD: Something-hotter.

MRS. LOVETT: Butler?

TODD: Something- subtler.

MRS. LOVETT: Locksmith?

TODD: Something-(Slumps, defeated)

We are the voyeurs of many cultures--caught in a nexus web, boarding and
unboarding planes and trains and skulls. The poem is where we arrive or don't
arrive. So mezmorize me, you say. Here is the story when we fall off a cliff,
there may be a crack in a mountain, a crack in space which admits the element
of water. We should have chosen the path around the mountain, but what is a
mountain before a mountain? An interior twisting and winding/
Choice is a matter of taste. We are gentle men; who breed black babies out of
a tongue, alien words; we are pipers, who strife the sea. The plane is circling
the Atlantic and we drop black silence. Listen closely.

We have already seen some fragments with a predominantly metalingual

function in Pirelli's Miracle Elixir, although it can be argued that

because of the somewhat peculiar communication structure in this song it

could be defended that this song is a mixture of phatic, appellative and

metalingual function.

Something happened when we attempted to become another cult/ure/ we became
merge, or crazed, or out casted from our conflicted self...arrested. And we
released our moorings from the earth. This constructed "I" but what is Islam
before an "I"? Releasing itself into a need larger than itself. Silence would
brood and bang on the flesh, encode, decode, could yawn open the curtains into
space; no ground. (A ground of being, perhaps, but not enough to live.) And
what is a ground of being but a red carpet in space swathed with the blood of
family trees. To simply thirst was why we set out in the first place. We posit

TODD: Something-(Slumps, defeated)