~ By Courtesy of Others ~
Song of the Utangardh
This is the place of exile,
the land of foreign gods, of foreign ways.
Hindi and Hebrew and Hopi chants
drown my own voice in tears;
My own language chokes me, half-stuck
in my throat.
Pounding church bells, driving shaman-rattles
shake my own prayer apart before it can form.
This is the sound of many-shaped chaos
far from the land of my strength,
far from the gods of my strength.
© Ingeborg S. Nordén
Ingeborg´s Norse Heathen Pages
Image: "Verhüllte Gestalt der Amme (Veiled Figure of the Wet Nurse)",
Anselm Feuerbach, German painter