i fell in love with german when i learned it didn’t require spitting
wasn’t harsh or guttural and reminiscent of nazis
but soft and slurring when i said ich liebe dich
i fell in love with italian learning musical terms as a pianist
legato and largo, pianissimo and adagio tumbled liquidly
from my lips, my heart singing like pavarotti’s puccini
i fell in love with latin and greek as a student of the ancients
yearning to revive a language long dead or argue
in the tongue of the philosophers and poets and playwrights
i fell in love with french reading dorothy sayers’ lord peter
and marveling that her characters spoke it with ease
whilst i could only count to ten, and none too well
i fell in love with welsh when i discovered my ancestry
wanting to have some tie to the motherland of my past
legitimize the language of the oppressed and despised
i fell in love with english at the muse’s first call
feeling the tug and pull of words at my heart and the flow
of syllables in my veins as i wrote myself down on paper
i fell in love with language, which some might think strange
but the history since babel fell i find fascinating, mysterious
how this gift develops, evolves, is corrupted and used to corrupt
yet how it can inspire and uplift and record the best of man
when we use language we are at our most God-like
