You Don't Have to Read This Part

i never liked
honestly enough
those fidgety leaves
those nerves
that fall short of the
translation of
the word
in my native language
yours too
but
which you must have
betrayed
for something lesser
than yourself
do not tell me more
go away
i know what nerves
are too
last night
i could not sleep

[...] Read more

poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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One’s tongue is the persistent calyx.

I read and write only in English.
It goes on for the last fifty years.
Yet my comfort zone is my mother tongue,
Only where I enjoy songs and dialogs.
14.02.2008

poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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To the Etruscan Poets

Dream fluently, still brothers, who when young
Took with your mother's milk the mother tongue,

In which pure matrix, joining world and mind,
You strove to leave some line of verse behind

Like still fresh tracks across a field of snow,
Not reckoning that all could melt and go.

poem by Richard Wilbur
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This is my

This is my native land
This is my mother tongue.

My land is free
No bondage is there.

Nobody can
holdup.

I can utter word
in my voice.

The air is
not fresh and fair.

poem by Gajanan Mishra
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Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.

quote by Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Foreign Language

Foreign language
Is a road that goes parallel
With our mother language
Every time we learn a new word and its meaning
We make a bridge between them
And when we have known most of all
We can walk together in wider road

poem by Maria Sudibyo
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I grew up in France, my first language was French, and I tend to gravitate towards French cooking.

quote by Robert Stack
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Bunny boiler is now part of our language, and I'm proud of that.

quote by Glenn Close
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The question is how to bring a work of imagination out of one language that was just as taken-for-granted by the persons who used it as our language is by ourselves. Nothing strange about it.

quote by Robert Fitzgerald
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Wanderer

Wanderer, far from his homeland,
You are poor and you are alone,
For the time, deprived of listening
To the music of mother tongue.

Yet here nature is so magnificent,
That you’re not entirely lost.
Singing birds on the trees around you –
Would you call it a foreign tongue?

Only listening to the autumn flute,
The cicadas iridescent chime;
Only noticing of the dragon-shape
Big white clouds up in the skies, -

You’ll embrace what you have inherited –
The eternal sadness and pain.
In your dreams, you’ll sail away back home
With your eyes shielded from the sun.

poem by Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev
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Love is coloured.

That music has no language
Is not containable.
The song sung in your
Mother tongue is the sweetest.
The song sung by the one
You love is the sweetest
.

Music has language.
Love has image.
07.03.2002, Pakd

poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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We might possess every technological resource... but if our language is inadequate, our vision remains formless, our thinking and feeling are still running in the old cycles, our process may be ""revolutionary"" but not transformative.

quote by Adrienne Rich
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We’re Indians First and Lastly!

We’re Indians firstly!
And that’s the way, we’re known all o’er the globe;
And that is what we tell the world around;
This is our primary identity.

We’re Indians firstly!
We may belong to any state by birth;
Then come our language, creed, community;
We’re Indians primarily!

We’re Indians firstly!
United are we by the tricolor;
The soil is one, though states be many;
We’re Indians basically!

We’re proud of our rich our Indian heritage;
Our thirst is quenched by rivers of India;
Our hunger is appeased by crops grown here;
We’re Indians first and ultimately!

[...] Read more

poem by John Celes
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Sonnet: What Language to Learn?

To improve a man, languages are meant;
You learn a language that can feed you first;
Learn your mother-tongue to needed extent;
But drink one may only if it doth thirst!

Learn many tongues if you want to progress;
In India, all can’t speak a common tongue;
By knowing languages, you can impress;
But choose one, to talk and sing, from among.

Our Motherland is made of many states;
All Indians are my brothers and sisters;
Through languages, a nation integrates,
And love amidst fellowmen, it fosters!

Man, learn to converse with all your brothers;
Spreading love’s message is what next matters.

(9-29-2000)

poem by John Celes
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Kashmir: a fire within

Kashmir: a fire within

Kashmir of our dreams
remains only a dream
subconscious playing games
it seems, like a jigsaw puzzle
with no real solution in sight
feeling like a wandering kite
some materialise in reality
some not
our Kashmir dream has not
that is a pity.

Politics overriding our feelings
our leaders
wavering & dithering in dealings
none to blame but ourselves
we lost our own bearings.

[...] Read more

poem by Tribhawan Kaul
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Suicidal English

A front to bulldoze the world?
The humble English language inches
Its way round the world picking up
A snobbishness that many ignorant
Souls would die to keep as if it is
The language of their souls
Particularly among Asiatics
Where some happily give up their
Mother tongue just to flaunt
Their mastery of a tongue
Which carries no historical naunces
Of their own, no cultural sounds
Which have taken an eternity.
To emerge in their own lingo;
A treasure then blindly
Carted away in the backyard,
A superficial sophistication keenly pursued;
Its attainment accentuating the
Shallowness and inadequacy of
Their own personality, identity and growth.

poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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My Romanian Language

Sweet, melodious there’s no other
like my language in this world,
From the lips of my grandmother,
every word is shining pearled.

It is born straight from the Light,
Sunrise over the Black Sea,
Just to hear it it’s a delight,
Oh, how great’s my love for thee!

My Romanian language, a treasure
Safely kept inside my soul,
Then released with grace and leisure,
Golden words that made me whole.

You can hear it in the leaves,
when you walk with Eminescu,
In the secret of the breeze,
Trying lovely to impress you.

[...] Read more

poem by Marius Alexandru from Doruri Sfinte (August 2018)
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Route Marchin

We're marchin' on relief over Injia's sunny plains,
A little front o' Christmas-time an' just be'ind the Rains;
Ho! get away you bullock-man, you've 'eard the bugle blowed,
There's a regiment a-comin' down the Grand Trunk Road;
With its best foot first
And the road a-sliding past,
An' every bloomin' campin'-ground exactly like the last;
While the Big Drum says,
With 'is "~rowdy-dowdy-dow!~" --
"~Kiko kissywarsti~ don't you ~hamsher argy jow?~"*

* Why don't you get on?

Oh, there's them Injian temples to admire when you see,
There's the peacock round the corner an' the monkey up the tree,
An' there's that rummy silver grass a-wavin' in the wind,
An' the old Grand Trunk a-trailin' like a rifle-sling be'ind.
While it's best foot first, . . .

At half-past five's Revelly, an' our tents they down must come,

[...] Read more

poem by Rudyard Kipling
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To My Inspiring Muse

Inspire my mind to make
soul-stirring music,
to enthrall the doleful hearts
for enchanting this world………., …..(Inspire..)

When I fly through the
Himalayan Valleys,
ignite my heart to sing,
the paeans to Nature………..(Inspire..)

I want to enfold the
ennobling river Ganges
and enjoy a nap on the
lap of the cool breeze. ……….(Inspire….)

I should feel exalted
from my injured heart;
and from my freak frenzies,
I will be strewing flowers. …….. (Inspire…)

[...] Read more

poem by Rajendran Muthiah
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Poets Lost In Translation

several differing translations
of some masterpiece poems
written by immortal poets
timeless especially esteemed
written in foreign languages

stresses how much poetry
suffers lost in translation
it is the hardest literary
medium to translate due
to the multiple meanings

of some words choice chosen
in the original mother language
the wonderful poetic effects
linking such words achieves
resonates in receptive souls

Is a good translation only
achieved when the translator

[...] Read more

poem by Terence George Craddock
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