I Dream in My Mother Tongue 

heavy with foreign dialects,

my mouth keeps faltering 

at making enough river of words 

to marathon into my mother tongue.

i wear another man’s lexicon long 

enough to watch it eclipse my own.

like water, 

different languages keep pouring 

into my dreams. of all, my mother’s distinct—

the mouth of a river chanting:

ọmọ mi, má gbàgbé orísun rẹ.

má gbàgbé orísun rẹ 

once, i forgot the word for home in Yorùbá.

i write “ile” on an earth brown page,

but this language requires intentionality.

a wrong tonal mark can morph ogún [twenty]

to ogun [war] / ìgbà [time] into igbá [calabash].

i write “ile” on the face of the river 

& it ripples

as if to say: padà wá s’ílé / come back home

padà wá s’ílẹ̀ / come back to the ground

to the ground where i take flight 

to get a degree in this colonist language. 

& what is a flight if there is no landing? 

listen to the bàtá drums weaving rhythm.

the odídẹrẹ́ is coming home to roost.

i dream in my mother tongue—

a testament 

that my mouth can still water 

back to my ancestry.

*Poetry Translation Centre & Book Buzz Foundation Project