A poem by the Swedish writer Kjell Espmark (b.1930)

When a language dies

When a language dies

the dead die a second time.

The keen-edged word that turned the soil

in moistly gleaming furrows,

the chipped word with steaming coffee,

the shiny, slightly flaky word

that for an instant reflected

the window and the restive elm out there,

the secretly scented word

that the hand felt its way towards in the dark

amid shy reassurances:

these words which gave the dead a life

beyond life

and the living a share of a larger memory

have just been scraped out of history.

So many shadows that are dispersed!

Without a name in which to dwell

they are forced into a final exile.

The sign on the overgrown station

has a name 54 letters long

that no one will ever pronounce again.

That is something one can put up with.

If only all those

who have died a second time

hadn’t taken with them the soil’s roughness,

the green from the foliage, the coolness from the stream.

The foot can suddenly go right through the field.

And no one knows what the wind wants of us

or why we once came here.

To be sure we can hear the birds in the tree

but what has become of their song?