Language Of My Heart (Rev) Poem by Margaret Alice Second

Illicitly reading the Bible in Afrikaans, illegally I sing
Langehoven’s Lullaby and recite Winter’s Night by
Eugène N Marias; according to a clever accountant
it is wrong to write Afrikaans since all dialects may be
freely spoken but never admitted to a higher status of
book learning: what daring, what infinite evil-doing this

Is, creating a century of poetry in an illegal tongue, it’s
asinine idiocy to leave the refined languages - of which
Dutch is our designated written language; to create our
own story, own dictionary, literature & church liturgy, it’s
blasphemy! - such presumption marks us as unholy and
unrepentant, so we’re cut off from our cultural roots and

End up revering English as the tongue of our history; I
sigh: Thank heaven for such a lingua franca; I’ll accept
all rejection & sing my Lullaby in Afrikaans & shining all
spiritual light in my mother tongue, listening as Mabalel’s
ankle-ringe still go klingelinge - enjoying the decadence
of learning life’s lessons in the language of my heart…