Kenyanpoet

• My mother’s Tongue

  Posted: July 3, 2008, 7:31 pm by N.W

  
  The first words I uttered were, tata and mama
  Only a child then muttering
  Like an echo from a distance
  Words that I only resonated.
  My mother’s lips,
  The roll of her tongue
  The flow of her words
  The role of my mother’s tongue
  Yes
  My mother tongue
  
  A tongue that has created a sound to the maker of culture
  A tongue that has created words whose proverbs made warriors of men
  A tongue that carried the weight of images
  Like a film, capturing and describing every heartbeat, every beat of a drum
  Every sun’s heat
  A tongue that formed solid gold words
  Whose words inspired thought of men to form tales, proverbs, idioms
  A tongue that gave birth to poetry, wise saying and folklore
  My mother’s tongue
  Yes
  My mother tongue
  
  I love my mother tongue
  Its cai and sukari sounds
  Like a snake hissing
  Words no other tongue can utter
  Nor explain their dept in meaning
  Deeper than still waters
  Broader than the rift in the great valley
  
  But why am I so afraid,
  Ashamed to let my tongue roll these words
  My lips like Maya Angelou’s bird are caged by foreign tongues
  
  My mother tongue is but a ghost now,
  A tongue ghost that haunts me fighting to be a living memory
  Fighting to reveal forgotten mysteries
  Resurrect me from white cemeteries
  Mass graves of western sanctuaries
  
  Oh mother speak!
  Call me out from this tomb
  Unearth the soil of ignorance, sophistication with your bare hands
  Call me out, break this spell that haunts me
  Let me take the remnants of your tongue’s pride
  
  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  N.W
  Kenyanpoet@gmail.com
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