I'd really like to see the different perspectives compared to my simple take that language is essential in communication and that ironically the poet tries to convey his emotions through language even though he says his language is gone.
Nothingness
I woke up at night and my language was gone
No sign of language no writing no alphabet
nor symbol nor word in any tongue
and raw was my fear-like the terror perhaps
of a man flung from a treetop far above the ground
a shipwrecked person on a tide-engulfed sandbank
a pilot whose parachute would not open
or the fear of a stone in a bottomless pit
and the fright was unvoiced unlettered unuttered
and inarticulate 0 how inarticulate
and I was alone in the dark
a non-I in the all-pervading gloom
with no grasp no leaning point
everything stripped of everything
and the sound was speechless and voiceless
and I was naught and nothing
without even a gibbet to hang onto
without a single peg to hang onto
and I no longer knew who or what I was
and I was no more
Aharon Amir, translated from the Hebrew by Abraham Birman
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according to jane austen, irony is the bringing together of contradictory truths to make, out of the contradiction, a new truth.. the entire poem is made up of irony, however one good example is line 15 because a sound cannot be voiceless..the author contradicts himself to reveal the inner thoughts and feelings of the main character in the poem