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Indigenous Literature

Two Poems

  • by Jaime Luis Huenún

Campfire

The fire weighs less than silence, papay, your
thick shadow that burns
among wet logs;
less than the silence of night
and sleep,
the light that shines
off birds and rivers.

“May the fire be your brother,” it speaks, it lights up
your mouth,
the story of fallen plains
and mountains,
the war between gods, serpents
of silver,
the passage of men
through lightning and blood.

You hear the gallop of the generations,
the names buried
with pitchers and fruits,
the tear, the clamor of slow caravans
escaping to the hills of death and life.

You hear the puma strike
the deer,
the trout leap into blue
rivers;
you hear the song of birds, you foretell
you hide behind ferns
and flowering fuchsias.

Now you breathe the dust of the nguillatunes,
the machi cutting the throat
of the chosen ram;
now you breathe the smoke before the rehue, the fire
that burns the bones of the long sacrifice.

“May the fire be your brother,” you say returning,
may the wide sun of the day
reunite brothers and sisters;
may the fire be your brother, papay, the memory
that silently embraces the shadow
and the light.

*Papay is a term of endearment for elder women in Huilliche.

 

Sister

Those eyes the color of color
from a gray height, watch
bellflowers, trickling water.

Does the silence come from the wind at this hour or
is it the drunken bees
bringing honey and blood
to the hive of your temples?

Because the water is beautiful,
and the sky is beautiful
and both are good friends – 
she says.

Because the light is my soul in the star,
and my breasts are fountains of light.

Because in silence we know what we are:
the eagle and the swan,
the deer and the puma,
mountains, spring and wind,
sowing the seeds of eternity.

*The lines in italics are by the poet Pablo de Rokha.

Translated by Arthur Dixon

 

Huilliche-Chilean poet Jaime Luis Huenún. Photo by Rodrigo Fernández.
  • Jaime Luis Huenún

Jaime Luis Huenún is a Huilliche-Chilean poet. He grew up in Osorno, near the Rahue River, which appears in many of his poems. He normally writes in Spanish, and his work represents an effort to construct a new indigenous poetics combining traditional themes with novel, sometimes experimental styles. His published works include Ceremonias (1999), El pozo negro y otros relatos mapuches (2001), and Los cantos ocultos (2008), and he served from 1993 to 2000 as director of Pewma, a journal of art and literature. He received the Pablo Neruda Prize in 2003 for his verse collection Puerto trakl (2001).

  • Arthur Malcolm Dixon
headshotarthurdixoncroppededited1

Photo: Sydne Gray

Arthur Malcolm Dixon is co-founder, lead translator, and Managing Editor of Latin American Literature Today. He has translated the novels Immigration: The Contest by Carlos Gámez Pérez and There Are Not So Many Stars by Isaí Moreno (Katakana Editores), as well as the verse collection Intensive Care by Arturo Gutiérrez Plaza (Alliteratïon). He also works as a community interpreter in Tulsa, Oklahoma and is a Tulsa Artist Fellow.

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