Isobel Montgomery Campbell
No longer speaking Swahili
As if I could go back to the whitewashed house in the
forest,
walk up the driveway to the clearing
it sheltered in, bend to pick a stalk of grass from the lawn
then wander in through the front door,
find the ladder-backed rocking chair
in the spare room: rub the smooth knot on its arm.
As if I could walk out to the kitchen veranda, have
the cool touch of evening on my skin,
come across Mwamburi and Stephen out the back
squatting round embers eating posho;
as if, by taking some, I could roil the sticky flecks of
whiteness
into a ball and swallow it: the way I learnt Swahili.
As if Swahili were a language I could still live in:
the house and the forest still there now.
Page(s) 51-52
magazine list
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- French Literary Review, The
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- Lamport Court
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- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
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- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
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- Poetry London (1951)
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
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- Shearsman
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- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
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- Weyfarers
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- Yellow Crane, The