(On the Erasure of Indigenous Languages & Cultures)

The words once flowed like rivers wide,
Now lost beneath a foreign tide.
The echoes dim, the voices fade,
As tongues are caged in foreign jade.

A child now speaks with borrowed breath,
Yet cannot name the land beneath.
The elders weep, their stories torn,
Their language hushed, their birthright worn.

Each syllable was carved in stone,
Yet silence claims what was their own.
The lullabies, the ancient songs,
Now ghosts where foreign voices throng.

The scripts erased, the stories banned,
The ink still bleeds through nameless hands.
A language drowned in foreign seas,
Yet still it whispers in the trees.

For though they stole the sacred verse,
Its spirit hums, its roots disperse.
No tongue can die, no past be lost,
If hearts still bear its fire, its frost.

A time will come when lips will mend,
When voices rise, when echoes bend.
The stolen tongues will break their chains,
And speak anew through blood and veins.

For language lives beyond the years,
Beyond the wars, beyond the tears.
No empire built on silenced sound,
Can keep the earth’s own speech unbound.