Gabeba Baderoon's "Breath"

Language is breath,
is touch, is spit,
is the silence before speaking.

Russian
A woman learning Russian describes
the new inclination of her head,
her chest, her hands,
the tightening of her upper lip
like bee stings around the mouth,
the muscular changes in her tongue
an invasion from the inside.

Arabic
I teach you to say the first letter of my name,
a sound between g and h,
for which there is no letter in English.

Breathe in,
take a sip of water,
breathe out.

The sound of breath leaving the throat
is the start of my name.

(from A Hundred Silences, Cape Town, Kwela/Snailpress, 2006.)
Gabeba Baderoon is the author of 'The Dream in the Next Body' (2005) and 'A Hundred Silences' (2006). She is the recipient of the Daimler Award for South African Poetry 2005 and was the TrustAfrica Writer in Residence at the University of Witwatersrand in 2008. Please visit her site for more of her work.

This poem also appeared in the Winter 2008 issue of Canopic Jar