Nhananggu Yagu
My mother
Belong to me
Always told me
Walk tall and strong
Little Nyarlu me
Nhananggu Yagu
My mother
Belong to me
Always told me
Don’t be afraid
In any space
This land is old
Your ancestor’s spirits
Will protect you for
They remember all those
Who belong and
Come from it
Nhananggu Yagu
My mother
Belong to me
Now in that land
Her spirit watches
Over me
As I move around
On this our land
Note: nhanaggu yagu is a Wajarri word for ‘my mother’ and yagu is a Wajarri word for ‘mother’.
Charmaine Papertalk Green is from the Wajarri, Badimaya and Southern Yamaji peoples of Mid West Western Australia. She has lived and worked in rural Western Australia (Mid West and Pilbara) most of her life, and within the Aboriginal sector industry as a community agitator, artist/poet, community development practitioner and social sciences researcher. Her poetry has appeared in Antipodes, Artlink Magazine, Cordite Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review and The Lifted Brow, as well as in the anthologies The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry, Inside Black Australia: An Anthology of Aboriginal Poetry, Ora Nui: A Collection of Maori and Aboriginal Literature, The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets and Those Who Remain Will Always Remember: An Anthology of Aboriginal Writing. She lives in Geraldton, Western Australia.
Subhash Jaireth has published works in Hindi, Russian and English, including three collections of poetry:
Yashodhara: Six Seasons Without You, Unfinished Poems for Your Violin and
Golee Lagne Se Pahle (in Hindi). He is the author of four books of prose fiction:
To Silence: Three Autobiographies, After Love, Moments and
Incantations.
