Speak White by Michèle Lalonde, 1970, translated Albert Herring, 2001–2012

This is a poem that is recited at the end of a production by one of Canada's greatest theatre personalities and authors -- Robert Lepage.  My sister saw a production of "887", which is about Robert Lepage's childhood (887 is the house number of his family home) and about his father's struggles to raise the family and support them on a taxi driver's wages.  "Speak white" is apparently what overseers would say to African slaves on the plantation when they tried to speak their own languages and it was also said by Anglo employers to French workers in Quebec in the old days.  It's a challenging poem -- I have read it several times and am still grappling with it -- but things worth doing are oftentimes not easy to do.

Speak White

Speak white
It sounds so good when you 
Speak of Paradise Lost
And of the gracious and anonymous profile that trembles
In Shakespeare's sonnets 

We're an uncultured stammering race
But we are not deaf to the genius of a language
Speak with the accent of Milton and Byron and Shelley and Keats
Speak white
And forgive us our only answer
Being the raucous songs of our ancestors
And the sorrows of Nelligan

Speak white

Talk about this and that
Tell us about Magna Carta
Or the Lincoln Memorial
The grey charm of the Thames
The pink waters of the Potomac
Tell us about your traditions
As a people we don't really shine
But we're quite capable of appreciating
All the significance of crumpets
Or the Boston Tea Party

But when you really speak white
When you get down to brass tacks

To talk about gracious living
And speak of standing in life
And the Great Society
A bit stronger then, speak white
Raise your foremen's voices
We're a bit hard of hearing
We live too close to the machines
And we only hear the sound of our breathing over the tools.

Speak white and loud
So that we can hear you
From St-Henri to St-Domingue
What an admirable tongue
For hiring
Giving orders
Setting the time for working yourself to death
And for the pause that refreshes
And invigorates the dollar

Speak white
Tell us that God is a great big shot
And that we're paid to trust him
Speak white
Talk to us about production profits and percentages
Speak white
It's a rich langauge
For buying
But for selling
But for selling your soul
But for selling out

Ah!
Speak white
Big deal
But to tell you about
The eternity of a day on strike
To tell the story of
How a race of servants live
But for us to come home at night
At the time that the sun snuffs itself out over the backstreets
But to tell you yes that the sun is setting yes
Every day of our lives to the east of your empires
There's nothing to match a language of swearwords
Our none-too-clean parlure 
Greasy and oil-stained.

Speak white
Be easy in your words
We're a race that holds grudges
But let's not criticize anyone
For having a monopoly
On correcting language

In Shakespeare's soft tongue
With the accent of Longfellow
Speak a pure and atrociously white French
Like in Vietnam, like in the Congo
Speak impeccable German
A yellow star between your teeth
Speak Russian speak call to order speak repression
Speak white
It is a universal language
We were born to understand it
With its teargas words
With its nightstick words

Speak white
Tell us again about Freedom and Democracy
We know that liberty is a black word
Just as poverty is black
And just as blood mixes with dust in the steets of Algiers
And Little Rock

Speak white
From Westminster to Washington take it in turn
Speak white like they do on Wall Street
White like they do in Watts
Be civilized
And understand us when we speak of circumstances 
When you ask us politely
How do you do
And we hear you say
We're doing all right
We're doing fine
We
Are not alone

We know
That we are not alone