English only!

they shouted

seizing Native American youth

shipping them to boarding schools

forbidding American speech

English only!

English only!

flog them!

whip them!

drive out those American words

drive away those American thoughts

Europeanize them

English only!

English only!

principals scream

grabbing Mexican-American youth

by the shirt collars

Dragging them off to detention

for speaking Spanish

English only!

English only!

flog them!

whip them!

drive out those Castillian words

drive away those Aztec thoughts

Europeanize them

Engels only!

But I can't understand Engels,

language of the Angles

conquered in 1066

by French knights

forced underground

becoming patois of peasants

then creoelized by colonialism

now a pidgin!

It's Englatino

not English

we speak Englatino

not English

over half our words,

from Latin and French,

thousands of others, from

Native American, African,

Asian, and Pacific tongues

It's a sponge language!

a mixed pidgin, and

there's Jamaican and BBC

and New York and Southern

and Cockney and Aussie

and South Asian and Scots

and Yorkshire and Black

so when you say

"English only!"

which is it, matey,

which dialect

English of Chaucer

or English of Beowulf

English of King Alfred

or Englatino of today?

English only!

English only!

Does that mean taking out

all of the borrowed words

words like language, literature,

library, liberation, liberty,

words like tomato, potato

words like tea, rice, tofu,

bamboo, monsoon, gungho

words like okra, banana,

coffee, cotton, Jesus?

Back to the year 1000

Back to the year 500

English only!

English only!

Jack Forbes