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Forgotten Language

By: Shel Silverstein

Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly
in my bed.
Once I heard and answered all the questions
of the crickets,
And joined the crying of each falling dying
flake of snow,
Once I spoke the language of the flowers. . . .
How did it go?
How did it go?


Shel Silverstein's poem, "Forgotten Language" is a short piece about his long-lost ability to speak the language of nature, and his inability to remember how to do so. In this poem, Shel describes all of the aspects of nature with which he had previous linguistic, intellectual, and spiritual fluency in. He starts with his poem with his communication to flowers, then moves on to caterpillars, starlings, houseflies, crickets, and finally how he, "... joined in the crying of each falling, dying flake of snow,". Shel Silverstein gracefully ends his poem with the repeated question of lost understanding and faint nostalgia, "How did it go? How did it go?"

Shel Silverstein is able to move his audience, any imaginitive reader that is, through elegant, poignant images of his ex-relationship with nature. He makes good, repetitive use of verbs such as: spoke, understood, smiled, shared, heard, and joined. His repetitive structure of examples and how he spoke, smiled, understood, etc, etc, each one really hammers home the idea that he misses something he once held great. He pulls his audience into his mindset by calling out familiar facets of nature with which almost all of us can relate. Things such as falling snowflakes, singing birds, buzzing houseflies. Then he simply adds a creative and poetic twist to the simplistic parts of nature. Bird-song becomes gossip, buzzing becomes conversation, and falling snowflakes suddenly become mournful. Finally, Shel envelops his final point by asking us the question, "How did it go? How did it go?"