As a child it was the place names

Singing at me as the first thing.

How the mouth must be employed

In every corner of itself

To say "appalacicola"

Or "hushpukena" like "gweebara"

A promise softly sung of somewhere else

And as a young man

Blessed to pass so many road signs

And have my foreign ear made fresh again

On each unlikely sound

But feel at home

Hearing a music

That few still understand

A butchered tongue still

Still singing here above the ground.

The ears were chopped

From young men

If the pitch-cap didn't kill them

They are buried

Without scalp

In the shattered bedrock of our home

You may never know your fortune

Until the distance has been shown between

What is lost forever

And what can still be known.

So far from home

To have a stranger call you darling

And have your guarded heart

Be lifted like a child up by the hand

In some town that just means

'home' to them

With no translator left to sound

A butchered tongue

Still singing here above the ground.