Full Description
"My language was born among trees,
it holds the taste of earth;
my ancestors' tongue is my home."
—from "The Old Song of the Blood"
A legacy of land and language courses through the pages of this spirited bilingual edition, offering an expansive take on the internationally renowned work of Humberto Ak'abal, a K'iche' Maya poet born in the western highlands of Guatemala.
Featuring both Ak'abal's Spanish translations from the indigenous K'iche' and English translations by acclaimed poet Michael Bazzett, this collection blossoms from the landscape of Momostenango—mountains covered in cloud forest, deep ravines, terraced fields of maize. Ak'abal's unpretentious verse models a contraconquista—counter-conquest—perspective, one that resists the impulse to impose meaning on the world and encourages us to receive it instead. "In church," he writes, "the only prayer you hear / comes from the trees / they turned into pews." Every living thing has its song, these poems suggest. We need only listen for it.
Attuned, uncompromising, Ak'abal teaches readers to recognize grace in every earthly observation—in the wind, carrying a forgotten name. In the roots, whose floral messengers "tell us / what earth is like / on the inside." Even in the birds, who "sing in mid-flight / and shit while flying." At turns playful and pointed, this prescient entry in the Seedbank series is a transcendent celebration of both K'iche' indigeneity and Ak'abal's lifetime of work.
Contents
Introduction
Kamik/Hoy/Today
I.
Dawn
Daybreak
The River
The Azacuanes
Ch'ik
Hunched
Broken Wing
On the Floor
The Song
Song of the Water
If They Could Speak
The Poncho
Time
Wingless Bird
Sheep
The Mutt
Singer
The Rabbit
My Sister
Cenzontle
My Wings
At the Spring
Bookworm
The Butterfly
The Naked Tree
Leaves
Peach Tree
II.
Apprentice
A Plank
Blue
Nothing
The Armchair
What Is, Is
That Tree
Stars
Night
Tired
Shadow
Watcher
Prayer
Soot
Water and Fire
To Begin With
Caretaker
Woodcutter
To Each Its Shadow
Sweetly
Leaves
Even So
The Bridge
Flowers
Happy
Stones
Trees
The Rain
They Know
Two Eyes
Clear Water
There
Lightning
Overheard in the Market
The Fire
Crazy
Old Cypress
A Leap
Grandfather
Awakening
ToFly
Landslide
Memory
I Speak
The Day I Grew Old
Beyond Help
III.
K'uxk'ub'el
My Shadow
The Craftsman
It's Been a While
The Moon on the Water
She
Fig Leaf
Meeting
Wish
Forgotten
Howl
Dusk
Rupture
I Took Your Name Out of My Head
The Sad One
IV.
And Nobody Sees Us
The Dance
Freedom
Flight
Downpour
Distance
The Sun
Before
Wild
Jaguar
I Would Like
Corn Prayer
I Don't Know ...
V.
The Old Song of the Blood
Shadows
Birth
Walking Backwards
If Birds
The Woodcutter
Broken Heart
Tremor of Fire Voices
Hands
That Day
A Person
Loneliness
The Spring
Pig
Paradise
A Book
Nameless
Tender, Withered
Those Who Wait
Dreamer
Crickets
The Blowhard
Old Anacleto
And, What's More
Lonely Tree
The Color of Mist
Old Feet
If Today Were Tomorrow
One Day
Deer
The Statue
In the Dark
Acknowledgments
