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
“Apalachicola”, or “Hushpuckena”
Like “Gweebarra”; 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
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