Search for My Tongue
Sujata Bhatt
“You ask me what I mean
by saying I have lost my tongue.”
(Full poem unable to be reproduced due to copyright)
VOCABULARY
Mother tongue - The language that you grew up with / the first language you
learned to speak.
Foreign tongue - A language spoken by people who are not from your native
country.
STORY / SUMMARY
The speaker talks directly to an unnamed addressee - we don’t know if she’s got a
specific person in mind, but we assume it is addressed to all of us English speakers.
She says she has ‘lost her tongue’ and asks us to imagine having two tongues in our
mouth - the second being parasitic and eventually taking over the place of the first.
She explains that she has lost her first tongue but doesn’t fully feel comfortable with
the other - this demonstrates an inability to fully communicate or express herself
properly. Her change of location has caused the original tongue to ‘rot and die’.
There is a volta beginning with the line ‘but overnight while I dream’, where the poem
shifts in tone - we realise that in her imagination and her subconscious, the original
tongue (language) grows back, powerfully like a spring flower, and eventually it
‘blossoms’ out of her mouth.
Sujata Bhatt
“You ask me what I mean
by saying I have lost my tongue.”
(Full poem unable to be reproduced due to copyright)
VOCABULARY
Mother tongue - The language that you grew up with / the first language you
learned to speak.
Foreign tongue - A language spoken by people who are not from your native
country.
STORY / SUMMARY
The speaker talks directly to an unnamed addressee - we don’t know if she’s got a
specific person in mind, but we assume it is addressed to all of us English speakers.
She says she has ‘lost her tongue’ and asks us to imagine having two tongues in our
mouth - the second being parasitic and eventually taking over the place of the first.
She explains that she has lost her first tongue but doesn’t fully feel comfortable with
the other - this demonstrates an inability to fully communicate or express herself
properly. Her change of location has caused the original tongue to ‘rot and die’.
There is a volta beginning with the line ‘but overnight while I dream’, where the poem
shifts in tone - we realise that in her imagination and her subconscious, the original
tongue (language) grows back, powerfully like a spring flower, and eventually it
‘blossoms’ out of her mouth.
