How can one be at home with words and yet long to be at their source?
It is not only thirteenth century Persian poets who ponder such thoughts. Contemporary French writer and philosopher Edmond Jabes says "being Jewish means exiling yourself in the word and, at the same time, weeping for your exile."
More broadly, we are all exiles: from our childhood, often from the place we were born, from our grandparents' country or language or religion, from an earlier stage of our own adult lives. Words can return us part way to those places, and we can reside in them, in the words.
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