Peter Bloxsom

Geographic Tongue 

My patchy tongue maps oceans, continents.
The doctor says it’s not unusual;
at once I think of Welsh, the emigrants
who took their tongue, its liquid double l,

its Celtic lilt, to Patagonia,
to naturalise it where conquistadors
had brought their own — harsher and sunnier,
laced with pride of empire — long before.

French took root in Tahiti; in Java, Dutch.
Some say a language of the Inuit
has Asian ancestry, for once a bridge
of land traversed the icy Bering Strait.

Imperialistic languages still oust
the native; cultures dwindle down, then vanish.
In seventeen seventy-seven in England’s west
a woman died, and with her death went Cornish.

English! Her forked tongue reaches round the world
to lick like flame at local languages.
No hegemony ever stretched so wide;
she takes few prisoners or hostages.

A northern scholar came with microphone
to interview an aborigine,
the last remaining speaker of his tongue.
This outback labourer, a man of sixty,

his history’s final, shambling avatar,
came compliantly, twisting his hat in his hands.
And stuck for words, the lexicographer
fled to his tent, there to savour the sounds,

over and over, with tear-filled eyes, of his own
familiar Nordic language on his tongue.

Author's note:  Acknowledgements to David Malouf’s short story,
"The Only Speaker of His Tongue," for the scenario of the
last three stanzas.