Jaime Luis Huenún
translated from the Spanish by Cynthia Steele
1. Ül* of Tripayan**
We would leave at night and arrive at night.
The light was my dream, above the ulmo trees.***
We would wander aimlessly in the moon’s water,
fleeing from pumas and angry foxes.
We would clear trunks from the burnt earth
so the Castilian wheat would sprout.
My father was a man with the sun at his back
and a piece of silver finery stashed in his pocket.
He would hunt rabbits with a soap bark club
and bury their innards, praying to the heights.
When he got old, he left for the dark mountains,
turning into silence and dewy ferns.
The house of the poor is called mountain range,
it is called gorge that ends in a river.
The house of the poor is the wind that carries
flocks of parrots to the blossoming fields.
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* ül: a song improvised in community celebrations, romantic relationships or as an homage to relatives, friends or neighbors
** Tripayan : “Sunrise”. a Mapuche-Huilliche lineage.
*** ulmo tree: a hardwood evergreen tree with white flowers
2. Forrahue
“. . . they raised their bloodied
hands to heaven. . .”
(El Progreso newspaper, Osorno
21 October 1912)
We didn’t speak Chilean, paisano,
Castilian, as they call it.
Bellflower yes, white and red,
michay flower, new fuchsia.
We didn’t know about the Virgin or Christ, father,
or God on High.
We would throw horse dung at each other in the pastures;
would steal honeycombs from the ulmo trees and the wild bees,
and mushrooms from the Patagonian oak trees of the pampa;
we would watch our sisters bathing naked
in the stream with handfuls of soap bark.
It was wrong.
Yes.
That’s why envy and discord and rifles;
that’s why deer and fish turned into wolves.
It was wrong, paisano, it was wrong.
We would eat raw lamb’s heart
during the lepún dance;
we would pray in huilliche to the branch of the bay tree
together with the machi;
we would burn to death anyone who sent evil spirits
against body and soul.
Witch devil, away with you! we would say, spitting,
and the owl would hide
in the thickest woods.
Wrong it was, wrong.
We didn’t know how to live natural then, friend, didn’t
know.
Our women would get pregnant in darkness and in light,
our children were raised at the mercy
of forests and rivers.
That’s how it was, little mother, how it was:
suddenly the stars stopped illuminating
blood for us,
and we had to hide like foxes
in the mountains and the ravines.