Appropriate

Everything you take,
Every word borrowed

From someone human,
From someone’s language,

Amounts to, for you,
Appropriation,

No matter whether
Whatever you stole

You inherited
From your ancestors,

Found under a rock
Or spotted tramping

Through a tradition
Not remotely yours.

Heritage is all
Gifts, thefts, gifts of thefts,

And in the corners
Of the human world—

War zones, prisons, camps,
Reeking factories,

That windowless mill
In Pompeii’s ruins

Where someone enslaved
Tromped with a donkey

In a circling rut
Until both were dead

And quickly replaced—
What’s inherited

But theft, and what’s theft
But inherited,

And who can say where
Their phrases came from,

Who can know all their
Ancestors have done?