A Mother-Tongue In Exile Poem by Birgit Bunzel Linder

“Why don’t you use your own language
to write? ” the poet asks over lunch.

A mother tongue
learned in a fatherland
hurts in this orphan exile.
I say.
When I try her words,
they dysfunction and trip.

“Wirklichkeitswund, ” I quote Celan.
But you do not understand
(me. Celan you know) .
Your raised eyebrows—
the same shape as the stylish silver fork
on your Imari plate—
quickly pick up dismay.

“Some people, ”
my mother once said,
“must journey far to know themselves.”

But here,
language and identity
undress the heart.
Here,
language and history,
become sleeves

of a remote overcoat.
Between them a shadow
loafs, a shadow, checkered
like winter soot
behind the spoken gates of home.