Speaking in Tongues

When I was ten or so in the Karoo

I went to meetings with a pal or two

Where rustic Pentecostals spoke in tongues.

We sidled among the yawping grownups,

Hoping to score some of the pastry treats

On hand, Evangelical service done,

Among these, especially, koeksiesters,

Donut braids cooked in spiced sugar syrup

(theirs was the Afrikaner sort, sprung from

the Cape Malay) that the urgent gabble

Seeming summoned, sweet as the just deserts

Served up in sophistry’s foody battle.

Not mnemonic madeleines, De Aar no

Combray, nor I a Proust, their memory

Still serves today, seventy-five years on,

To evoke the unintelligible:

Poets echoing Xenoglossia’s* bark

Now backed by a strong academic team;

Unfriended pigeons poisoned in the park.†

Every book a preternatural scream.

* Xenoglossia is distinguished from simple glossolalia inasmuch as the words uttered are considered to be in an actual foreign tongue—albeit one unknown to the speaker.

† Thanks for this line to the late Tom Lehrer (1928–2025).

Header image from Immaculate Bites,

https://www.africanbites.com/traditional-koeksisters.

Monday, November 3, 2025