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Zeitz MOCAA
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Speaking in Tongues
By Kei Miller, 2007
This poem begins in 1987
My grandmother dragged us to meet the Lord
under a tent in St. Catherine. From her
I trace the heritage of standing spellbound
As women worship. Always I am on the outskirts.
I remember my grandmother unbecoming
The kind of woman who sets her table each Sunday,
Who walks up from the river, water balanced easily
On her head. My grandmother become, instead, all earthquake- tilt and twirl and spin,
Her orchid-purple skirt blossoming.
She became grunt and rumble- sounds
You can only make when your shoes have fallen off
And you’re on the ground
Crying raba and yashundai, robosei and
Babababababababba. Years later a friend tells me
Tongues is nothing but gibberish- the deluded
Pulling words out of dust. I want to ask him
What is language but a sound we christen?
I would invite him to a tent where women
Are tearing their stockings, are on the ground
Pulling up fresh words to offer as doves to Jehovah.
I would ask if he see no meaning here
And if he never had the urge to grunt
An entirely new sound. The poem, always,
Would like to do this, always wants to break
From its lines and let a strange language rise up.
Each poem is waiting on its own Day of Pentecost
To thrash, to robosei and yashundai,
And the poem will note care that some walk past,
Afraid of the words we try out on our tongues
Hoping this finally is the language of God,
That he might hear it and respond.
Credit: ‘Speaking in Tongues’ from There is an Anger That Moves (Carcanet Press, 2007), Kei Miller, 2007.
By Kei Miller, 2007
This poem begins in 1987
My grandmother dragged us to meet the Lord
under a tent in St. Catherine. From her
I trace the heritage of standing spellbound
As women worship. Always I am on the outskirts.
I remember my grandmother unbecoming
The kind of woman who sets her table each Sunday,
Who walks up from the river, water balanced easily
On her head. My grandmother become, instead, all earthquake- tilt and twirl and spin,
Her orchid-purple skirt blossoming.
She became grunt and rumble- sounds
You can only make when your shoes have fallen off
And you’re on the ground
Crying raba and yashundai, robosei and
Babababababababba. Years later a friend tells me
Tongues is nothing but gibberish- the deluded
Pulling words out of dust. I want to ask him
What is language but a sound we christen?
I would invite him to a tent where women
Are tearing their stockings, are on the ground
Pulling up fresh words to offer as doves to Jehovah.
I would ask if he see no meaning here
And if he never had the urge to grunt
An entirely new sound. The poem, always,
Would like to do this, always wants to break
From its lines and let a strange language rise up.
Each poem is waiting on its own Day of Pentecost
To thrash, to robosei and yashundai,
And the poem will note care that some walk past,
Afraid of the words we try out on our tongues
Hoping this finally is the language of God,
That he might hear it and respond.
Credit: ‘Speaking in Tongues’ from There is an Anger That Moves (Carcanet Press, 2007), Kei Miller, 2007.
