1. There are no handles upon a language
2. Whereby men take hold of it
3. And mark it with signs for its remembrance.
4. It is a river, this language,
5. Once in a thousand years
6. Breaking a new course
7. Changing its way to the ocean.
8. It is mountain effluvia
9. Moving to valleys
10. And from nation to nation
11. Crossing borders and mixing.
12. Languages die like rivers.