He comes from a world corrupted with strange words
through centuries of domination and neighbourhood,
which mud has spattered or swallowed up.
He comes from a land where the houses have names,
where nicknames are inherited without surnames.
He still remembers a time cold as iron,
of burning fire-tongs, one-handled pots, toasting-forks,
of dusting with sulphate, tying up plants, going for kindling,
of poultry in caged runs in the back-yard.
He knows all the knacks of patching and darning clothes
and a handful of children’s songs that no one else knows.
Now he is like the stranger in a new country
whom no one understands when he utters the words of his own people,
like the dumb man who begs for charity,
and wants empty hollows, the things he has lost.
Wild boar jabbing futilely at mud
looking for roots.