The First Voices of Creation

Every language imagines birds differently, and in doing so reveals something about itself. English hears a “tweet”; French prefers cui-cui; Russian lets birds chirikat’/чирикать and svistet’/свистеть; Hebrew listens to the many voices of the tsiporim/ציפורים; while Yiddish, perhaps because it has wandered across so many countries and listened to so many neighbors, is content neither with imitation nor with classification. It borrows, reshapes, invents and smiles, hearing sounds before it asks where they came from. Long before linguists described language families, Yiddish had already welcomed them into conversation.

Birds themselves have always stood at the edge of that conversation. They crossed seas before maps existed, followed invisible routes before human beings imagined borders, and filled the air with repeated cries long before anyone distinguished consonants from vowels or grammar from melody. Human speech did not invent rhythm, repetition or articulation. It inherited them from a living creation that had already discovered how breath could become meaning.

One understands this almost instinctively while standing on the cliffs of the North  Atlantic Sea, or from Scilly Isles up to the Shetlands, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Jan Mayen and the Scandinavian coasts, Svalbard. There the Atlantic never quite falls silent. Wind, ocean and birds participate in one immense exchange whose grammar remains beyond human invention. The periarctic Puffins (Lundir-Fulmar) disappear into narrow fissures in the rock before returning with deliberate murmurs. Gulls stretch their cries across the waves until they resemble long vowels suspended above the sea. Gannets descend like exclamation marks. Ravens interrupt the air with rough consonants, while eagles circle so high above the precipices that their silence itself becomes another form of speech.

One begins by watching birds. Before long, one discovers that it is language itself that is being observed.

The following poem emerged from such listening. It is not intended as a catalogue of Faroese birds, nor as an exercise in comparative linguistics, although Hebrew, Slavic, Germanic and Yiddish echoes all find their place within it. Rather, it follows the slow birth of articulation itself. The birds do not merely sing. They prolong sounds, interrupt one another, repeat, hesitate, answer and linger. Before speech becomes language, articulation has already entered the world.

That is perhaps why Yiddish proves such a natural companion for this journey. Born from migrations rather than frontiers, it has spent centuries receiving sounds before classifying them. Germanic roots, Hebrew prayer, Slavic consonants, Romance echoes and countless local voices entered the language not as museum exhibits but as living neighbors. Yiddish rarely asks whether a sound belongs before allowing it to become part of its own speech. In this sense it behaves less like an academy than like a flock of birds, each voice remaining distinct while contributing to a shared chorus.

The poem therefore asks a question that reaches beyond ornithology or philology. What existed before language itself? Before grammar, before alphabets, before dictionaries, before the first human being gave names to living creatures, the world was already resonating with voices.

פּיפּ־פּיפּשטשן צװישן פֿעלזן און מדבריות

Pip-Pipshing Between Cliffs and Wildernesses

די אָפּהאַנגען מאַכן אַ רוּקנבײן אַרום די אינדזלען,
יעדע סקאַלע טראָגט אַלטע נשימות.
דער שיפֿמײַסטער קערט ניט צום זאַמדיקן ברעג,
ער פֿאָרט לאַנגזאַם און פֿאַרנעמט די פֿלעקציעס.

The sea-cliffs form a backbone around the islands,
each skerry bears ancient breaths.
The skipper does not return to the sandy shore;
he sails slowly, taking in the flexions.

דער פּאַפּאַגײַ־טוּקער געפֿינט זײַן לעכל
צװישן װילדן גראָז און אױף הױכע פֿעלזן.
דרײַ מאָל מוּרמעלט דער טוּפּיק,
און די לוּפֿט באַרשרײַבט זײַן נקודותדיקע פּיטשען.

The parrot-puffin finds its little hollow
among wild grasses and upon the high cliffs.
Three times the puffin murmurs,
and the air inscribes its pointed pitches.

די מעװע שלעפּט אירע לאַנגע װאָקאַלען
אַריבער די טרײַסעלנדיקע כװאַליעס.
דער האַװעסט שלאָגט די בײַגעבײניקע געהילכען
און פּאַטשט אין די שאַרפֿע װינטן.

The gull draws out her long vowels
across the trembling waves.
The gannet strikes its bow-legged echoes
and splashes into the sharp winds.

פֿױגל, פֿוּגל, פֿאָגל, פֿאָ׳על איז אַ צװיטשנדיקע פּטיטשקע;
ער־זי־דאָס סישטשעט מיט אומפֿאַנגבאַרער דיק־דיקדוּק.
קולות הערן זיך, סילאַבען שפּילן זיך אײַן,
דער אױסלײג פֿאַרקלאַמערט זיך אין מאָדנע צײכנװערטער.

Bird, fugl, fogel, fo’el—a chirping ptichka.
He-she-it hisses with unreachable dik-dikduk.
Voices are heard; syllables begin to play,
while pronunciation clings to strange written signs.

מיר האָבן אַ באַזוּנדערן ריש־קלאַנג.
ער גראַבעלט, קלערט, שײַערט דעם גאָרגל און זשליאָקן.
פֿײגל און מענטשן לאַכן זיך מיט העלדזער און צונגן,
יעדער מיט אײגענער חכמה און שטילן פֿאַרשטאַנד.

We possess a particular resh-sound.
It burrows, broods, scrapes the throat and the gurgling veins.
Birds and human beings laugh with throats and tongues,
each with its own wisdom and quiet understanding.

װײַט־װײַט איבער באַקאַנטע אַראָפּהאַנגען
טראָגן די פֿלינקע עיטים
די קוּרצלוּפֿטיקע פּוסטענישן.
די נשרים קרײַזן זיך כמעט שכלדיק — אין אָרדנונג…

Far, far above the familiar precipices,
the swift eagles carry
the short-breathed wildernesses.
The great eagles circle almost thoughtfully—in order…

דער ים צײכענט אַנדערע אותיות
מיט פֿילמאָליקע כרײן־ציוצים.
פֿעלזן רוּפֿן צו טשיקאַװע כראַקענס,
װי דער רוח איז מרחפֿת — אין דער לשון פֿון אונדזערע װילדערנישן.

The sea traces other letters
with countless raven-cries and chirps.
The cliffs call out to curious krakens,
as the Spirit hovers—in the language of our wildernesses.

דער טופּיק־פֿױגל שטשעבעשט ניט אײַן־צװײ מאָל.
ער האַלט אָן זײַן קלאַנג, טשירקט, קװאַקט, טרילערט,
ביז דער גערעװ װערט אַ קלאָרער אָפּשײַד־סימן.

The puffin does not chatter once or twice.
It holds its call, chirrs, quacks and trills,
until the clamour becomes a clear sign of parting.

שױן לאַנג פֿריער האָבן די פֿײגל
גערעדט אײדער ס׳איז געװען אַ שפּראַך —
אומגעשטעלט און געמאַכט די װעלט בע.

Long before this, the birds
spoke before there was a language,
rearranging and making the world be.

The poem deliberately refuses to conclude with a completed word. Its final syllable, בע, is neither an accident nor a riddle waiting to be solved. It remains the beginning of speech itself. English readers may hear the verb be. Hebrew readers cannot fail to think of the opening ב of בראשית, the threshold through which the biblical story of creation begins. Every child, whatever language he or she will one day speak, begins with similar syllables before grammar arrives. The poem therefore ends, not with a conclusion, but with an origin.

This is why the birds are not presented as decorative creatures inhabiting an attractive landscape. They are the first masters of articulation. They repeat, prolong, interrupt, answer, wait, recognize one another and remember. Their voices already contain rhythm, interval, emphasis and silence. Human grammar will later organize these realities, but it does not invent them.

The biblical tradition has always understood this more profoundly than we often realize. Birds are never merely ornaments scattered through Scripture. The Psalms listen to them. The prophets observe their migrations. The Book of Job repeatedly asks human beings to learn from creatures that know something they themselves have forgotten. Creation speaks before humanity explains.

The Gospel quietly continues this biblical listening. Jesus of Nazareth points toward the sparrows of Jerusalem, birds so ordinary that they scarcely attract a passer-by, yet not one is forgotten before God. He immediately turns to the lilies of the field, observing that even Solomon, clothed in all the splendor of his kingdom, never possessed the effortless beauty granted to creation itself. The lesson is not romantic admiration for nature, but the recognition that existence receives its dignity before human ambition attempts to measure it.

The same reversal appears when a poor widow approaches the treasury of the Temple. Surrounded by wealth, she quietly offers two small coins, almost invisible amid the abundance of larger gifts. The Gospel hears what others overlook. So does birdsong. It seldom forces itself upon us. It repeats, answers, pauses and begins again until the attentive listener discovers that the smallest voices often carry the deepest truths.

Yiddish itself has always lived by a similar attentiveness. It did not grow behind walls or academies. It travelled. It crossed frontiers with those who spoke it. Germanic structures welcomed Hebrew prayer; Slavic consonants found a home beside Romance echoes; local dialects entered without surrendering their own color. The language did not erase differences. It allowed them to resonate together. In this respect Yiddish resembles a colony of nesting birds upon a cliff: countless individual voices, none identical, yet together forming one living soundscape.

That is perhaps why a Yiddish poem can return to the first morning of creation without abandoning either Jerusalem or the North Atlantic. Wind still hovers above the waters. The Spirit is still מרחפת (flying like an eagle). The birds continue their ancient conversations without consulting grammarians or political frontiers. They migrate without passports, cross seas without treaties and preserve memories older than our alphabets.

The question, then, is no longer how humanity invented language. The deeper question is whether language itself first learned to breathe by listening to creation.

Long before human beings named the world, the world had already begun to pronounce itself.