
My time is running out
and still
I have not sung
the true song
the great song
I'm also reading this brilliant and beautifully written non-fiction book called Spoken Here by Mark Abley. It's about endangered languages (and, by no coincidence, endangered peoples) including Manx, Mohawk, Yiddish, aboriginal Australian tongues, and many more. The book is tragic, funny, lyrical, idealistic, thought-provoking, worrying. Montrealer Abley is not a linguist per se but a world traveller, writer, and humanist. So much better than Bruce Chatwin whose ego, I felt, always blocked my view of the peoples he was writing about. Postscript: hah, three of the five writers I have named here are Canadian.