Source

I’m closing out this language-themed celebration of World Poetry Day with  ‘My Faithful Mother Tongue’ by the late Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz.  In all, I have featured four poems on language, the previous three are: Ama Ata Aidoo’s Homesickness, WS Merwin’s Losing a Language and Silver’s langwij.

I do hope four posts in one day signals my return to blogging.

There’ll be more poetry next month when I celebrate US National Poetry Month.  So do come back in April!

My Faithful Mother Tongue

Faithful mother tongue,

I have been serving you.
Every night, I used to set before you little bowls of colors
so you could have your birch, your cricket, your finch
as preserved in my memory.

This lasted many years.
You were my native land; I lacked any other.
I believed that you would also be a messenger
between me and some good people
even if they were few, twenty, ten
or not born, as yet.

Now, I confess my doubt.
There are moments when it seems to me I have squandered my life.
For you are a tongue of the debased,
of the unreasonable, hating themselves
even more than they hate other nations,
a tongue of informers,
a tongue of the confused,
ill with their own innocence.

But without you, who am I?
Only a scholar in a distant country,
a success, without fears and humiliations.
Yes, who am I without you?
Just a philosopher, like everyone else.

I understand, this is meant as my education:
the glory of individuality is taken away,
Fortune spreads a red carpet
before the sinner in a morality play
while on the linen backdrop a magic lantern throws
images of human and divine torture.

Faithful mother tongue,
perhaps after all it’s I who must try to save you.
So I will continue to set before you little bowls of colors
bright and pure if possible,
for what is needed in misfortune is a little order and beauty.

– Czeslaw Milosz

Source.  Translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz & Robert Hass