To be born once again, in a totally different language and culture, is a painfully travail, sometimes going to the dangerously vicinity of the pathology. That’s because the second time you are completely aware of travail and to feel it in all your mind & soul’s joints is a task completely incumbent on you. This kind of birth has an exhausting particularity : it might take a whole life to be done or, at least, much too much and this time nobody gives you applause for your babbling, for your “on all fours” toddler way of walking among (new) people, (new) things and words. Nobody freezes when the thermometer shows that your temperature goes crazy and nobody has long “white nights” next to your bed when you dream deliriously about “the lost paradise.” Nobody lifts you up when you fall nor wipes off your tears and send away your fears. Nobody hands you a “magna cum laude” crown when you learn / write your first poetry – a good sign though that the birth into a new language goes actually well (good dilatation, a close to normal pulse, a good Apgar, figurative speaking, of course).
That’s why the birth into a new language and culture looks more like a disease, whose cure can be found generally back home, to the place you’ve just been leaving it because of N, X, Y, Z reasons.
The syllables painfully coagulate themselves and it looks like you learn before anything else how to say “ouch! It hurts!” Maybe that’s why creating a poem or just writing an ordinary text (here) has not too many chances to wave the pink coloured flag of optimism. At least not those from the beginning. All your senses pay tribute to this travail I’ve been mentioning it. And that’s why on the first stage, you can barely see something from the new promises of the new life, you can barely hear (or not hear it at all) the song of a totally new and different way of living, still being seduced by the siren’s song of the Past, of your roots…
Because so far I’m concerned this travail is getting dangerously long, I decided to go for a Caesarean even this means one point less for my Apgar.
And here I am, trying to coagulate out of syllables my “nice to meet you!” salute into a new world & language.

HOW TO LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE


Hello there!
Anybody in here?
I’ve been told
I’m just another
Unexpected baby
And I’m probably
Too loud
for your
confortable ears
Or I might
Get you nervous
For not knowing
How to smile
In your language
yet
The only thing
We already have
In common
Is crying
No matters what
The reason is
So, please,
Let my tears
Say hello to you
Until I’ll learn
How to smile
Again
All I need you
To do
Is
You giving me your hand
Some great researchers
Use to tell
There is this new method of learning
A foreign language and
A different way of living
-by touching hands
which carefully contain
into their crystal-clear image
An open soul