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Mothertongue

 

I dreamt such a dream the other night,

While I was so secure in my sleep.

A moon made of bone threw down its light,

Into the ground so deep.

 

I stood beside my grandmother crone,

I was but eight year old.

She stirred and she cooked upon a fire,

As she held my hand so cold.

 

She spoke to me, so graciously,

With words not really talked, but sung,

In mystic mists of coloured language,

She called our mothertongue.

 

There was a picture of the Virgin,

Upon a hook made of wire,

Spirits in a bottle upon a shelf,

Reflected light from the fire.

 

She stoked up the embers,

Calling forth such a fury from the flames.

She told me the stories and the long

Forgotten family names.

 

My child-mind absorbed it all,

My imagination was stung.

As grandmother spoke of our ancestry,

In the land of the mothertongue.

 

(A cloud moved across the moon,

My hand began to shake,

Shadows brushed my eyes,

I stirred, but I did not wake.)

 

Now, its much too quiet beside her coffin,

Where she lay there so still.

I reached down and kissed her with my lips,

Oh, how her skin now had the chill.

 

As through this man-made world, I journey on,

I am awake yet still I sleep.

I see that old woman there before me,

Oh, how her laughter yet makes me weep:

 

"You'll never be lost, angry grandchild,

Why you have hardly just begun,

And I'll be there beside you, darling one,

When you hear your mothertongue.

Yes, I'll be there beside you, darling one,

When you hear your mothertongue."

 

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