I, who am ignorant
Need to know
If white is virtue true
So I can go and bleach my skin
Asks this question, a loyal man
Because he needs to know
If the black man should not be baptized
In the baptismal font
If there is yet another more pure
Going forward, going back
Prettier, shinier
Where the white man is dipped
Will someone tell it straight
For I, who am ignorant
Two men and one woman
From whom we all descend
While only the black man
With disdain ought to be faced
The same blood it must be
Though the black man alone
Is placed forever
Separate
If the black man is not baptized
I need to know
Black was St. Benedictine
Black his paintings too
And in the Holy Scripture
I have never seen
a single word writ in white ink
Black were the nails driven through the Christ’s hands
Died, he, upon the holy cross
Is it possible then, that down he came
Not to suffer for the white man’s sins
Only this way will I know
If the color white is virtue true
When we have to account
To my God for every deed
How will the black man atone
For the white man’s sins
If the black man is then found
Without a crime for which to pay
Will they say that it’s not true
That the white man has no sentence
That it’s all been misconstrued
So that then I may go and bleach my skin
Every time I lift my foot,
every time I lift my hand,
I shake my tail.
I listen to your voice come from very far.
I am almost asleep:
I look for a fallen tree
to crawl inside, and sleep.
My skin, my foot, my hand,
my ears are scratched.
And then you were born,
girl with eyes so black.
Black as the coal your father burns,
like your mother’s skillet,
like the burnt underside of her comal.
Like the eye of the well shot through by darkness.
Retelling of the Flood Caused by the Mapocho River in the City of Santiago de Chile
“On June 16, 1783 the effects of torrential rains caused the river Mapocho in Santiago, Chile to flood its banks. At the time the small community of Carmelite nuns resided in their cloistered convent next to the river. The rains started in May, but became a deluge in early June and by the time of the great flood, it had poured for 209 hours straight. The nuns would have drowned, had it not been for some neighbors who broke a hole in one of the walls, leading twenty-eight women to safety. Sor Tadea de San Joaquín, a nun from the Carmelite Convent of San Rafael, retells their story in a 516-versed romance [ballad], wherein Sor Tadea affirms that it was God’s will that the nuns be saved by the three men (she does not leave out the ironic detail that they had to be sobornados (bribed).”
– Sarah E. Owens,
Travels, Natural Disasters, and the Texts of Cloistered Nuns: A Case from Colonial Chile
Identity, it is not in my hair
It is not in my face
Reflecting in the mirror.
Identity is not something to see,
It has no form, it has no color
But delicate like a flower it is
Identity lies within the speaking force
In the profundity of a look
In the singularity of my place
Identity is open hands and share
Feel the earth’s echoes and Love and peace at heart.
Identity is open arms and receive
The brotherly affirmation.
Identity is Union!
When encircled by a thirst of soul
man, a desert traveler, wishes
to gather armfuls of laurels,
having reached the gates of glory;
“Stop right here,” however, he says to the woman…
Returning, then, to his march,
if he feels himself waver, and lose his valor,
“Come, come,” he tells her,
“You are my partner
in the hours of combat and agony…”
Foolish men, eagerly accusing
women without cause,
seeing not that from you springs
the very same, those very flaws;
If readily you do invite them
to happily disdain you,
how do you want them well behaved
if toward evil you’ll incite them?
[…]
What temper could be stranger?
Than that of he who, lacking counsel,
fogs the mirror with his breath
and then whines at blurred reflection?
[…]
How can she, who for your love longs,
keep her wits and keep her center
if she who doesn’t is a prude and offends
and she who does is a slut and angers?
Though between the anger and the insult
by all your liking forged,
if there still be one who doesn’t want you,
then joyous hour for complaint.
Your lovers hang sorrows
on liberty’s wings
for, after making them bad,
you wish to find them good.
Whom, then, has sinned more
in mistaken passion:
she who falls to his begging?
Or he who, fallen, begs her?
Or who has greater blame,
though in any blame you’ll find,
she who sins for pay
or he who pays to sin?
How are you then startled
to find guilt there in your heart?
Love them as you make them.
Or make them as you wish.
[…]
Now, with all my weapons
your arrogance I battle,
for in promise and petition
you join devil, flesh, and world.
Smoke and nothingness, the breath of being:
Flower, man, and bird die too
as love runs to forgetful seas
and pleasure flees to a burial of brevity.
Where are yesterday’s lights?
All splendors have their dusk,
behind liquor hides all bitterness,
and everything is rectified by the evil of being born.
Who laughed without first, in pain, moaning
pleasure, sweet suffering?
Crazy and vain, the passion of feeling!
Vain and crazy, I long for thought!
What is it to live? To dream without sleeping.
What is it to die? To sleep without dreaming.
Here is the water and the hill,
here the altar of jade,
Amaquemecan—Chalco
in the place of renown
in the place that is example,
near the fields of reeds,
at the edge of the forest,
in the nearness of snow,
where they say Poyauhtlan,
[…]
in the garden of flowers,
in the garden of mists,
where lives the white quail,
where curls the snake,
near the dwelling of tigers,
in Tamoanchan,
in the place of our beginning,
where flowers rise…
Here they came to settle
the lords Chichimecas,
the priests,
the princes…
Oh, my poor island, victim of hopeless hopes,
On the other side of the ocean, tempest and wind,
I think of your misfortune and hold for you, within my soul,
A dream for happier things. All the while they slander you,
Your daughter in the shade of an absent sun
From the great sea where a red sky bursts in laughter,
Guiding you to the other side of tempest and wind,
This memory as deep as the shadow of your verse.
Thus spoke Tochihuitzin,
Thus spoke Coyolchiuhqui:
****Perhaps we left the dream
****we only came to dream,
****it is not true, it is not true,
****that we came to live upon the earth.
****Like a weed is spring
****in our being.
****Our heart bears, makes sprout
****flowers from our flesh.
****Some part their petals,
****then wither.
Thus spoke Tochihuitzin.
Breaking ship and shore
it plunges deep.
Giving of itself
what the self is unable to give.
Shipwrecked heart:
you unleash storm clouds
and you drag drown
bleakly
the High Heavens.
Cihuateteo¹
Her body’s indigo flakes away
but red
remains the cinnabar of her headdress,
mineral wax on her eyelids,
a serpent coiled around her waist,
a resin brazier,
her half-open lips
…desire still remains.
¹Nahuatl word meaning “Divine Women.” In Aztec mythology, the souls of women who died in childbirth became these spirits who accompanied the setting sun.
Like the wind stirring up what has been lost…
I return to look for them to no avail:
dismembered, they left with the echo of the world
Misplaced, abandoned, bewitched
to the beat of “New York, New York”
Scattered leaves, pigeon droppings
they let their owner loose to raindrops
Meanwhile,
the ocean drinks up my groove,
my recollections,
splashing the shifting of memory:
“Blowing in the wind” Bob Dylan
is singing.
This is the song of how the Uinal was created before the world was created, before dawn. […] Before the first awakening of the first world, the Uinal was born. Then, he began to walk, all on his own, in the company of his maternal grandmother, of his maternal aunt, of his sister-in-law. And the women said, “What shall we say, when we come upon tracks on the road?” In this way, they spoke, before man existed. While they walked along together. Then they arrived there, at the East, and found tracks upon the road. “Who has tread here?” they asked themselves. “We shall measure these tracks with our own feet,” they added. And they measured God’s footsteps, which is why they called the count of the world’s cycle Lahca 12 Oc (the day: young sun, son and nephew of moon). The measurement was taken when they’d gathered their feet precisely so, and then they left, from the East.
as blahaj.zone and lemmy.blahaj.zone run on different servers, and both were unreachable at the time of my op, i really meant dead, not down
from the article:
From the Popol Vuh, or National Quiché History
[Excerpt from Part II]
“Brother, the bats have stopped moving. It looks like the sun has begun to rise,” said Ixbalanqué to Hunahpú.
“Perhaps. I am not sure,” answered Hunahpú, “Let me look…”
And when Hunapú stuck out his head, to see if dawn was breaking, Camazotz cut it off at the neck with a single blow.
“Hunahpú, is it morning yet?” Ixbalanqué asked. And when his brother did not reply, he yelled out, “Hunahpú! Where are you?”
Then Ixbalanqué understood the silence. […]
from the article:
I, Who Am Ignorant
I, who am ignorant Need to know If white is virtue true So I can go and bleach my skin
Asks this question, a loyal man Because he needs to know If the black man should not be baptized In the baptismal font
If there is yet another more pure
Going forward, going back Prettier, shinier Where the white man is dipped Will someone tell it straight For I, who am ignorant
Two men and one woman From whom we all descend While only the black man With disdain ought to be faced
The same blood it must be Though the black man alone Is placed forever Separate
If the black man is not baptized I need to know Black was St. Benedictine Black his paintings too And in the Holy Scripture I have never seen a single word writ in white ink
Black were the nails driven through the Christ’s hands Died, he, upon the holy cross Is it possible then, that down he came Not to suffer for the white man’s sins Only this way will I know If the color white is virtue true
When we have to account To my God for every deed How will the black man atone For the white man’s sins
If the black man is then found Without a crime for which to pay Will they say that it’s not true That the white man has no sentence That it’s all been misconstrued So that then I may go and bleach my skin
from the article:
Every time…
Every time I lift my foot, every time I lift my hand, I shake my tail. I listen to your voice come from very far. I am almost asleep: I look for a fallen tree to crawl inside, and sleep. My skin, my foot, my hand, my ears are scratched.
from the article:
Return to the Countryside
Women pounded the grain for a vegetable stew
night was imminent they had to hurry because lanterns were forbidden
when the gong called for dinner the soldiers did not share the meal with the peasants
the next morning half of them had denounced their parents the other half wore posters on their bodies condemned to certain death
the order was to climb the mountain to live up in the heights among the lowliest but the sky answered with floods
so they returned to the cities looking for carrion
that was my army ravenous crows
Rationing
In the line a woman shouts there’s flour
I think of warm biscuits
Soon I hear only rice is left but my happiness is futile
They’re bringing sugar Oh! miracle I will wait I hear words ricochet the sugar is gone
The line begins to disperse
I persist eventually they will bring something finally a hand offers me a chicken I leave with my treasure
In a bookstore nearby a friend has the nerve to read me a long poem the poet doesn’t know why I flee such an ordinary goodbye fills me with guilt
You must live in a country with hunger to understand how a poem’s symmetry can be broken by the slow drip of guts and blood
from the article:
Like Coal
And then you were born, girl with eyes so black. Black as the coal your father burns, like your mother’s skillet, like the burnt underside of her comal.
Like the eye of the well shot through by darkness.
from the article:
Retelling of the Flood Caused by the Mapocho River in the City of Santiago de Chile
“On June 16, 1783 the effects of torrential rains caused the river Mapocho in Santiago, Chile to flood its banks. At the time the small community of Carmelite nuns resided in their cloistered convent next to the river. The rains started in May, but became a deluge in early June and by the time of the great flood, it had poured for 209 hours straight. The nuns would have drowned, had it not been for some neighbors who broke a hole in one of the walls, leading twenty-eight women to safety. Sor Tadea de San Joaquín, a nun from the Carmelite Convent of San Rafael, retells their story in a 516-versed romance [ballad], wherein Sor Tadea affirms that it was God’s will that the nuns be saved by the three men (she does not leave out the ironic detail that they had to be sobornados (bribed).”
– Sarah E. Owens, Travels, Natural Disasters, and the Texts of Cloistered Nuns: A Case from Colonial Chile
from the article:
Indigenous Identity
Identity, it is not in my hair It is not in my face Reflecting in the mirror. Identity is not something to see, It has no form, it has no color But delicate like a flower it is Identity lies within the speaking force In the profundity of a look In the singularity of my place Identity is open hands and share Feel the earth’s echoes and Love and peace at heart. Identity is open arms and receive The brotherly affirmation. Identity is Union!
from the article:
The Man
When encircled by a thirst of soul man, a desert traveler, wishes to gather armfuls of laurels, having reached the gates of glory; “Stop right here,” however, he says to the woman… Returning, then, to his march, if he feels himself waver, and lose his valor, “Come, come,” he tells her, “You are my partner in the hours of combat and agony…”
from the article:
Foolish Men
Foolish men, eagerly accusing women without cause, seeing not that from you springs the very same, those very flaws;
If readily you do invite them to happily disdain you, how do you want them well behaved if toward evil you’ll incite them?
[…]
What temper could be stranger? Than that of he who, lacking counsel, fogs the mirror with his breath and then whines at blurred reflection?
[…]
How can she, who for your love longs, keep her wits and keep her center if she who doesn’t is a prude and offends and she who does is a slut and angers?
Though between the anger and the insult by all your liking forged, if there still be one who doesn’t want you, then joyous hour for complaint.
Your lovers hang sorrows on liberty’s wings for, after making them bad, you wish to find them good.
Whom, then, has sinned more in mistaken passion: she who falls to his begging? Or he who, fallen, begs her?
Or who has greater blame, though in any blame you’ll find, she who sins for pay or he who pays to sin?
How are you then startled to find guilt there in your heart? Love them as you make them. Or make them as you wish.
[…]
Now, with all my weapons your arrogance I battle, for in promise and petition you join devil, flesh, and world.
from the article:
Prayer to the Moon
Moon, lead to me a woman to be my wife. Lead her to me, oh moon. Moon, a horse, lead to me also. Moon, lead to me, a tiger.
from the article:
To Live and Die
Smoke and nothingness, the breath of being: Flower, man, and bird die too as love runs to forgetful seas and pleasure flees to a burial of brevity.
Where are yesterday’s lights? All splendors have their dusk, behind liquor hides all bitterness, and everything is rectified by the evil of being born.
Who laughed without first, in pain, moaning pleasure, sweet suffering? Crazy and vain, the passion of feeling!
Vain and crazy, I long for thought! What is it to live? To dream without sleeping. What is it to die? To sleep without dreaming.
from the article:
Neurosis
You do know that the spirit is an abyss and the heart an ocean: That this is how I can carry within me one infinity, and also the other.
My nerve endings, a living harp, hang from the branches of my frame of forest flesh, letting out a whimper as—across the strings— tiptoes the storm.
from the article:
Excerpt from Relaciones, or Anales
Here is the water and the hill, here the altar of jade, Amaquemecan—Chalco in the place of renown in the place that is example, near the fields of reeds, at the edge of the forest, in the nearness of snow, where they say Poyauhtlan,
[…]
in the garden of flowers, in the garden of mists, where lives the white quail, where curls the snake, near the dwelling of tigers, in Tamoanchan, in the place of our beginning, where flowers rise… Here they came to settle the lords Chichimecas, the priests, the princes…
from the article:
Defeated
We can give up.
It matters not to surrender in silence, if the drums of vengeance echo from afar.
Sign of the Times
Nouns, pronouns, articles… prefixes of the quotidian, suffixes of the allowed. Verbs to regulate conduct and adjectives to qualify injustice.
Nouns, pronouns, articles… exact forms, easy to invert.
The letter, occasionally freed, rebels. And adds, but, also divides.
The word is cursed. It is the sign of the times.
from the article:
For Haiti
Oh, my poor island, victim of hopeless hopes, On the other side of the ocean, tempest and wind, I think of your misfortune and hold for you, within my soul, A dream for happier things. All the while they slander you,
Your daughter in the shade of an absent sun From the great sea where a red sky bursts in laughter, Guiding you to the other side of tempest and wind, This memory as deep as the shadow of your verse.
from the article:
We Came to Dream
Thus spoke Tochihuitzin, Thus spoke Coyolchiuhqui: ****Perhaps we left the dream ****we only came to dream, ****it is not true, it is not true, ****that we came to live upon the earth. ****Like a weed is spring ****in our being. ****Our heart bears, makes sprout ****flowers from our flesh. ****Some part their petals, ****then wither. Thus spoke Tochihuitzin.
from the article:
In Waters of Darkness
Breaking ship and shore it plunges deep. Giving of itself what the self is unable to give. Shipwrecked heart: you unleash storm clouds and you drag drown bleakly the High Heavens.
Cihuateteo¹
Her body’s indigo flakes away but red remains the cinnabar of her headdress, mineral wax on her eyelids, a serpent coiled around her waist, a resin brazier, her half-open lips …desire still remains.
¹Nahuatl word meaning “Divine Women.” In Aztec mythology, the souls of women who died in childbirth became these spirits who accompanied the setting sun.
from the article:
Footprints
Like the wind stirring up what has been lost… I return to look for them to no avail: dismembered, they left with the echo of the world Misplaced, abandoned, bewitched to the beat of “New York, New York” Scattered leaves, pigeon droppings they let their owner loose to raindrops Meanwhile, the ocean drinks up my groove, my recollections, splashing the shifting of memory: “Blowing in the wind” Bob Dylan is singing.
from the article:
The Creation of the Uinal [Excerpt]
This is the song of how the Uinal was created before the world was created, before dawn. […] Before the first awakening of the first world, the Uinal was born. Then, he began to walk, all on his own, in the company of his maternal grandmother, of his maternal aunt, of his sister-in-law. And the women said, “What shall we say, when we come upon tracks on the road?” In this way, they spoke, before man existed. While they walked along together. Then they arrived there, at the East, and found tracks upon the road. “Who has tread here?” they asked themselves. “We shall measure these tracks with our own feet,” they added. And they measured God’s footsteps, which is why they called the count of the world’s cycle Lahca 12 Oc (the day: young sun, son and nephew of moon). The measurement was taken when they’d gathered their feet precisely so, and then they left, from the East.