If I had been the lone survivor
of my Tasmanian tribe,
the only person in the world
to speak my language
(as she was),

if I had known and believed that
(for who can believe
in an inexhaustible language),
and if I had been shipped 
to London, to be exhibited
in a cage (as she was)
to entertain the curious
who go to museums and zoos,

and if among all those people
staring and pointing and laughing
and making their meaningless sounds
there had been one thoughtful face,
a woman’s, say, sympathetic,

who might have instinctively understood
the one word I could not let die,
the indispensable word 
I must pass through the bars
of mutual incomprehension,

what word would it have been?