Poem: "The Flesh of Many Voices"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This poem is spillover from the October 6, 2020 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from Anonymous. It also fills:
Fall Festival Bingo Card 10-1-20:
Don't fool with recombinant DNA technology unless you're really sure you know what you are doing.
This poem belongs to the Sounds of Civilization series. It comes after "Clear as a Whistle" and "And Then It Clicked."


"The Flesh of Many Voices"


Once the Avari
and the Jikiki had
made contact with
humanity, people
struggled to adapt.

The new opportunities
came hand in wing in claw
with the new challenges.

Some people tried
to modify themselves,
or even human embryos,
to make it easier for them
to communicate with the aliens.

Mostly what they learned was
that you shouldn't fool with
recombinant DNA technology
unless you know exactly
what you are doing.

Others learned from
their mistakes and
made other ventures.

It turned out that while
every sapient species had
developed different languages,
most of those were more similar
than the languages of Earth.

Humans had spoken languages,
but those branched out into
whistling and drumming forms.

They had sign languages,
but also things like Braille
for tactile communication,
and Morse code could be
rendered in beeps or
flashes or anything else
of variable length.

Unlike the Avari
and the Jikiki with
their rigid mouthparts,
the human body was
more flexible and this was
reflected their languages.

The variety and range
were just stunning.

Some humans rejoiced
in the flesh of many voices,
learned Silbo Gomero and
Xhosa, and went out into
the galaxy as translators.

* * *

Notes:

Language diversity appears in human languages, coding languages, and adaptive communication.