“Walls,” Chapter 1: “never a sound of building”
Walls
Without reflection, without mercy, without shame, they built strong walls and high and compassed me about. And here I sit now and consider and despair. It wears away my heart and brain, this evil fate: I had outside so many things to terminate. Oh! why when they were building could I not beware! But never a sound of building, never an echo came. Insensibly they drew the world and shut me out.
Source: Translated from the modern Greek by John Cavafy. This poem is in the public domain
(https://poets.org/poem/walls).
“never a sound of building”
Walls, limits, borders. They are physical, brick-and-mortar partitions, but also elusive confinements within brain neurons. These mental walls are constructed by verbal cues embedded in condemnations and signals encountered throughout one’s lifetime. The cues travel from the hearing nerve to the cortex that determines perception. From the repetition, the perceptive nerves transform them into mental bricks that erect walls within. When young, the building process goes unnoticed, and we even participate in the building. Ironically, as children, they tell us to build walls and sandcastles. We obliged and walls and barriers we build. As adults, we live in boxes stacked on top of each other. We are next to each other, together yet apart.
But time goes by. We become old. Then, on a cold afternoon while sitting next to the window where the sunset light is warm, astonished, we finally see the walls. Forced out by the light, they step from behind the half open curtains like ghosts and encircle us. At that point, we wonder when they were built these walls since we never heard sounds of building, never saw the builders nor the bulldozers. But here they are and now what?
