“BUNAHAN When the last speaker of Boro falls silent, who will notice the first-grown feather of a bird’s wing? (gansuthi) or feel how far pretending to love (onsay) is from loving for the last time (onsra)? Quiet and uneasy, in an unfamiliar place (asusu) no one sees her, or listens; there is less of her than there was. The last speaker feels Boro’s world fall apart, knowledge unravels: healing plants go unseen; the bodies of animals are unreadable. With a last thought, onguboy (to love it all, from the heart), she leaves fragments of the world she held in place. We touch their husks, about to speak and about not to speak (bunhan, bunahan); awash in loss, incomplete. Note: The italicized words are from Boro, an endangered language still spoken in parts of northern India. For more on this story, see Mark Abley’s Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages.” PoetryLanguageWonderPoetPoemAntiquityLinguisticsLanguages And CulturesLost Languages Author:Laurelyn Whitt