Like all creations in the beginning
there was a woman.
A mother.
Children,
brought to a strange land
Seemed lost.

They were brought here by boats.
Boats built of flesh and bones
of their father,
now seem lost,
even to each other!
Her stories that tied them together,
kept them anchored,
against the tide of new,
to the shores of old,
could no longer hold them together.
Stretched and torn and weak in places,
when they forgot old words,
or well known phrases,
It was coming undone in places.

So she had to create a new language,
mixing the new with the old
A lilting new song
that flowed like melted gold,
like the river-land they came from.

But, it also sounded clear and strong.
Like the brass bells of churches
of the new land
where they now belong.
Sailors' who sang of old colonies...
Behold! Brown poetry was born.

Her daughters vowed
To safeguard the words.
Birthing, adopting, surrogating new words.
They kept on building on
what their mother had forged.

One was called mind.
The other was called soul.
The youngest was body.
She kept growing, learning...
turning them all into a beautiful whole.

Eeshita Azad
British Bilingual Poetry Collective (previously British Bangladeshi Poetry Collective)
Instagram: @saree_poem
Twitter: @eeshitaazad