Mother tongue

1

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.

2

In a pocket of earth

I burried all the accents

of my mother tongue

there they lie

like needles of pine

assembled by ants

one day to stumbling cry

of another wanderer

may set them alight

then warm and comforted

he will hear all night

a lullaby as truth

John Berger