Feel It?

Bouba kiki bouba kiki.

One sounds round and one sounds spiky,

Which has now been shown to hold true

Among multiple languages

And users of multiple scripts

In some of which kiki looks round

And bouba more spiky, but still

Bouba sounds round, kiki spiky.

And what is the point of all this?

There’s some crossmodal connection

In how the brain sees sounds as shapes,

Which is rooted deep in language.

Think of such patterns in the brains

Of your earliest ancestors

Who wed meaning to them—sounds, shapes,

Signs, words—the rolling container

Waves moving through the synapses

Culled a multisensory world

Their brains modeled and predicted

To make contours for all meanings.

When you mean something, you feel it.

Sense translates between the senses

Like any translation, meaning

Creates a new thing as it means.