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You Have Two Voices

By Nancy Prasad

You have two voices when you speak

In English or your mother tongue.

When you speak the way your people spoke

The words don’t hesitate but flow

Like rivers, like rapids, like oceans of sound,

And your hands move like birds through the air.

But when you take a stranger’s voice

When you speak in your new tongue

Each word is a stone dropped in a pool.

I watch the ripples and wait for more.

You search in vain for other stones to throw.

They are heavy. Your hands hang down.

You have two voices when you speak;

I have two ears for hearing.

Speak to me again in your mother tongue.

What does it matter how little I understand

When the words pour out like music and your face glows like a flame.