When they call a hill a timpa

What’s left of the language of youth when its speakers

have all but gone, but exercises in delving

into the origins of words? The grey-haired woman

on dialysis, what does she care if her word for orange

comes from the Persian, narangˆ? Or if the tafareja

where she stores her wedding ring, comes from

the Arabic for jar? The old man who seeks solace

in communion wafers and lottery tickets, what does he care

if the word he uses to name the mouse he snared

has its origins in French? If the suriciu he trapped that morning

derives from souris, or the slice of nduja he used as bait

comes from the French, andouille?

What do the old women care if when they bake

their pitti at Easter they speak a word borrowed

from Albanian, or when they call a hill a timpa,

instead of rupe or collina, they speak the last trace

of Oscan? Do they care when they say ajumari

when lighting a fire, it springs from the Occitan,

allumar? Or when they call someone’s head

a capizza, it stems from the Spanish, cabeza?

And what do they care if the word they use for persimmon

is the same in Japanese? What do they care

if they use these words instead of the ones that came

with nationhood? Capo, topolino, salsiccia, giarra—

foreign words, all the same. What interest do

the words of dominion and cultural influx hold for them?

What do they care when they use the word viatu

to describe how someone went quickly in their sleep?

Would they care to know its origins in an arcane

form of French? Are they mindful how the word

lends more dignity than using presto, so redolent of magic tricks

where loved ones might vanish in mist and vapours?

Why would anyone care for the word tambuto—

their word for coffin? Would it soothe them to know

its Arabic roots? Tambuto!—like the sound of earth falling on wood.

Tambuto!—like the taam-buu-ra-taam-buu-ra-ta of a tambourine.

The woman searching death notices for familiar faces,

what would she care if time relegated her words to archive drawers

and to German philologists to catalogue and study? What would she care

if the word she uses for handkerchief—muccuturi, muccutur—

were the bastard brother of a Catalan mocador?