Lyrics

Say licked clean at birth. Say     weeping in the tall grass, where         this tantalizing song begins,     birds perched on a crooked branch over a grave of an unending trek     into the valley of cooling waters.         The soil's thirst, lessons of earth     unmoor the first tongue. Say I have gone back, says the oracle,     counting seasons & centuries, undoing fault         lines between one generation & next,     as she twirls sackcloth edged with pollen, & one glimpses what one did not know. Say     this is where the goat spoke legends ago         in the ring of fire to deliver a sacrifice.     To feel signs depends on how & why the singer's song puckers the mouth.     Well, I believe the borrowed rib         story is the other way round, entangled     in decree, blessing, law & myth. One only has to listen to nightlong pleas     of a mother who used all thousand         chants & prayers of clay, red ocher     blown from the mouth onto the high stone wall, retracing land bridge     to wishbone. My own two daughters         & granddaughter, the three know how     to work praise & lament, ready to sprout wings of naked flight & labor. Yes,     hinged into earth, we rose from Lucy         to clan, from clan to tribe, & today     we worship her sun-polished bones, remembering she is made of questions.     No, mama is not always the first word         before counting eggs in the cowbird's     nest. It begins in memory. Now, say her name, say Dinknesh, mother of us all.