I don't know how far I'm going to have to
go to see my own self
or hear my own voice.
I tuned in on the radio
for hours
and never heard it. Then I went to the
movie picture show
and I never heard it there.
I put handfuls of coins in the
machines
and watched records turn,
but the voice there was
no voice of mine.
I mean, it was not my voice,
not the words that I hear in my own ears
when I walk along and look at faces.
I sit here in a Jewish delicatessen
and I order a hot pastrami
sandwich on rye bread
and I hear the lady ask me,
would you like to have a portion
of coleslaw on the side?
And I know when I hear her speak
that she has my voice.
And I tell her I would like my coleslaw on a side dish,
please.
And I'd like to have a glass of tea with lemon,
please.
And she knows that
I'm speaking her
And a fellow sat across the table
near my wall.
And he spoke as he ate his salami
and drank his beer.
And somehow I had the feeling
as I heard him speak.
And he spoke a long time.
not one word was my personal language.
But I could tell by the deep sound,
the full tone of his voice,
that he spoke my language.
And I suppose you may wonder
just how he could speak in a dialect
that I could not savvy or understand,
and yet I understood every
sound that he made.
I learned to do this a
long time ago,
walking up and down the side roads
and the main stems of this land here.
I learned to listen this way
when I washed dishes on ships,
and I had to learn how to I knew it when I walked ashore in Africa, an d in Scotland, and Ireland, Britain,
and London, and Britain, an d London, Glasgow, and Liverpool, and Glasgow, and Scots, an d Scotstown,
and Anglo's farms,
and Irish canals, and railroad bridges,
and Highlanders' cows, and horses.
here, I knew the speech was
the same as mine,
But it was the dialect again.
Nasal, nasal, throaty, and deep, and and chesty,
chesty from the stomach, from the lungs,
from high, up in the head,
from pitch up, pitch up and down.
And here I had to learn
again to say,
this is my language.
This is part of my voice
Oh,
but I have not even heard this voice
These voices on the stages
and screens
And on radios and records
and jukeboxes and magazines,
or in newspapers,
seldom in courtrooms,
and more seldom when students and policemen are study
ing the faces behind the voices.
And I thought as I saw a drunk
en street -walking man
mutter and spit and curse into the wind
outside of the cafe's plate glass
that maybe if I look closer
I might hear some more
of my voice
And I ate as quiet as I could
so as to keep my eyes and my ears
and my feelings wide open
And I did hear, I heard all that I came
to hear here in Coney Island's Jewish air.
I heard reflections, recollections,
seen faces in memory.
I heard voices untangle
their words before me.
And I knew by the feeling that I felt
that here was my voice.
You
Ani Difranco 
