Mother let me cry
not letterpress
nor telex
nor stainless speech
bulletins
announce disaster
with impunity –
but the pages of the wound.
Mother let me speak
not adjectives
to colour
their maps of wretchedness
nor nouns to classify
the families of pain –
but the verb of suffering.
My mother tongue taps
the sentence
on the prison wall
Mother let me write
the voices
howling in the falls.
In a pocket of earth
I buried all the accents
of my mother tongue
there they lie
like needles of pine
assembled by ants
one day the stumbling cry
of another wanderer
may set them alight
then warm and comforted
he will hear all night
a lullaby as truth
1985