Speaking in Tongues by Kei Miller

Lent, Day 10

This poem begins in 1987.
My grandmother dragged us to meet the Lord
under a tent in St Catherine. From here
I trace the heritage of standing spellbound
as women worship. Always I am on the outskirts.
I remember my grandmother unbecoming
the kind of woman who sets her table each Sunday,
who walks up from the river, water balanced easily
on her head. My grandmother became, instead,
all earthquake - tilt and twirl and spin,
her orchid-purple skirt blossoming.
She became grunt and rumble - sounds
you can only make when your shoes have fallen off
and you're on the ground
crying raba and yashundai, robosei and
bababababababba. Years later a friend tells me
tongues is nothing but gibberish - the deluded
pulling words out of dust. I want to ask him
what is language but a sound we christen?
I would invite him to a tent where women
are tearing their stockings, are on the ground
pulling up fresh words to offer as doves to Jehovah.
I would ask him if he sees no meaning here
and if he never had the urge to grunt
an entirely new sound. The poem, always,
would like to do this, always wants to break
from its lines and let a strange language rise up.
Each poem is waiting on its own Day of Pentecost
to thrash, to robosei and yashundai,
and the poem will not care that some walk past,
afraid of the words we try out on our tongues
hoping this finally is the language of God,
that he might hear it and respond.

Love the double meaning in "outskirts" and "unbecoming".

For me, this is how I feel when preparing a sermon or talk. I can work and work, but unless those words get their own Day of Pentecost, it will not be the language of God. Thinking of all those up and down the country preparing to speak tomorrow.

The photo is of "Mrs Dlamini" (there is also a "Mr Dlamini") named after the wonderful couple who looked after us in Swaziland when I was pregnant with our first, about 27 years ago. Not that I think only black people speak in tongues - though I do think they often get there more easily than us whites with all our inhibitions.