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When God Grew a Tongue

The first human voice was African. 

 

Divine essence grew a tongue, 

wagging with fricatives and open syllables. 

 

The telling tongue walked out of a Great Rift Valley carrying its necessary words: 

mama

matiti

mfupa

imbwa

 

It gathered more words to embellish necessary ones: 


mungu 

cheza 

ndio  

 

Listen

In our mother tongues live all the dawning conversations.  

 

Confabs with       

wind and rain, 

storm and fire, 

bugs, birds, beasts, 

tall grasses and trees. 

 

The same conversations curl beneath our modern breath,

ready to feed the heart to hearts,  

we need to remember how to have     again. 

 

All those words even now
 fill a loom with the weft and the weave 

            of desire             vision

            duty             love.

 

When words fly into space and look down,

they watch a spreading web of lights

and

they call it


blanketi la njaa duniani 

Earth's hungry blanket,


edges         fraying               mungu          imbwa 

                                    cheza                                    mfupa  

                                                        ndio                               matiti                      mama.



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