What Language do you Dream In?

Mother Tongue
Afrikaans (as depicted above) is my mother tongue, but I dream in English. At the age of 20, I married an Englishman and English gradually seeped into my language of preference. Even though I have been surrounded by Afrikaans speakers this past decade, English remains my language of preference. It is the most widely spoken language with 1.5 billion people using it wordwide. The following poem is an example where my dream state is best expressed in English:

The Seat of Truth
The moth mistakes my bare skin for moonlight—recurring, insistent. Its wings dust the wrist like a forgotten promise, reminding me of a question I never dared ask aloud. I had held his wrist, not his hand. A ghost of a moment playing on loop in my hypnagogic state.

moonlight 
     TrEmBlEs 
on my wrist 
where s i l e n c e nestles 
and my pulse   
     p^u^l^s^e^s
until wings 
forget what F L I G H T meant 
     without aCHe   
          and consequences …
Copyright © Suzette Richards (2025)
LINK: https://www.poetrysoup.com/poem/the_seat_of_truth_1752789

Other Languages
I love French for its musicallity—one could tell me to go to h... in French and I would look forward to the trip! See the concrete poem depicted above.
But it is not always the translation of a poem which poses a problem. One needs to understand the intent and the cultural references behind it. For example, Piet Hein wrote about 10 thousand Grook, mostly in his native tongue, Danish, although many had been translated over the years. His first Grook, Consolation, was a protest poem against communist occupation during WWII and unless we understand the history, the essence of the poem is lost on us as it was on the censors of the time.
We often come across translations of poetry and it might not jive with the design format of a poetic form, eg, the example poem at the Definition of Sijo at Poem Types here at PoetrySoup. This famous text is a traditional Korean sijo poem written in the 16th century by the renowned kisaeng and poet Hwang Jini (also known as Hwang Chin-i). 
When reading a poem by a foreign poet, we need to ask ourselves whether it is a translation by the poet as in the two poems depicted above ('Crous' is one of pen names), or if it is a scholarly translation (as in the case of the said Sijo), or even an attempt by AI. In the latter case, one would often find that the essence of the poem it lost in translation as AI does not grasp idiom unless prompted, or rely on direct translations of words. One needs to be proficient in both languages to guage the level of accuracy, eg, Pushkin's Onegin Stanzas in both Russian (a Slavic language) and English. Consider how many interpretations there are of Basho's 'frog pond' haiku!

A Multilingual Poetry Site
The work around it might be to sign up for Premium membership and post the poem in English as required by this site, and append an audio track of the poem in the native tongue. This will solve the problem of 'lost in tanslation' as the English speaking readers might not be able to do justice to the pronunciation of the text in a foreign language. For example: people historically mispronounce names such a Van Gogh, Munch, Ramaphosa, Everest, etc. Misinterpretations might be the result as even in English the stresses of vowel sounds change with intent (nouns versus verbs, etc)—there is that ...

Have your Say
I have been told by readers on my old poetry websites that they only read work by a particular group of writers, be it American or British English poets. You can't change people's minds and that is their prerogative.
Do you think that it is a personal matter or could we entice readers to read more widely—not just poetry, but also history and the cultural differences to be found among poets and its readers? Does the language you dream in have an influence on your reading preference? 

Take wing!
Su