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The Quantum of the Indian
The broken Indian after having anticipated the “actual science,” the quantum of molecular entanglement, having sustained that image with her life, generation after generation, the image of the rains and flowers each dreaming the song of the other, remembering the place of its counterpart, knowing that in spacetime everything is reciprocal exchange, relation, having sustained it for millennia, now they are erased, destroyed for having held on to this view.
Will we arrive on time to embody that vision on earth, as the Yoeme, Wixárica, and Raramuri? Will we ever honor as a species the dream of life dreaming its own transformation?
Translated by Daniel Borzutzky
And if I devoted my life
to one of its feathers
to living its nature
being it understanding it
until the end
Reaching a time
when my acts
are the thousand
tiny ribs of the feather
and my silence
the humming the whispering
of wind in the feather
and my thoughts
quick sharp precise
as the non-thoughts
of the feather?
translated by Eliot Weinberger
The Unconnected Fiber
The unconnected fiber, the newly-spun thread
was born undoing itself in its birth,
to be perpetually re-born,
this was the meaning of all earthly undertakings,
our infinite daily tasks keeping that substance alive,
as it forever dies and comes undone
unravelling itself to be reborn,
the lone fiber, melodic substance,
origin and end of our days.
Translated by Rosa Alcalá
From The Soul Conveys Itself in Shadow
El alma se mueve en la sombra, Stenen Press 2023
The foot
Before the birth of sensation
In the mist of feeling
Was a foot
Distance
Lifted it
The mist
Was the beginning
Of the foot.
The sole
Touched
The ground
The foot’s
Knowledge
Was born
In the meeting
Of the sole’s lines
And the earth’s
Cracks.
QUIPOem, l997
Translated by the author
The Poem is the Animal
The poem
Is the animal
Sinking its mouth
In the stream
"La Wik'uña", Chile, l990
I DON'T KNOW
SEPARATED
by Nikola Madzirov
Hanging by a Thread
h
a
n
g
i
n
g
by a thread
the
web
says: www
we will weave
una puerta llorosa
y piedras en los pies
a weeping door
and stones on your feet
web up
web on
re a lida des
a linea das
weaving clouds
against death.
I DON'T KNOW
SEPARATED
by Nikola Madzirov
Let the Fable Begin
El comienzo es el com, being "with."
The "uni verse" wants to converse.
"Verse," is to turn.
Galaxies and blood
breath and sound.
Ibn Arabi dreamt he made love to the stars.
Words are stars, the night sky I see.
"Justice" began as a ritual form, an exchange.
O así lo veía mi corazón embelesado en la con templación,
the temple of con
sciousnes
the fulcrum of change.
A possibility contained in a name,
Com: a pre-verbal form, the handiwork of peace, the search for a common ground,
join with, mutually comic, c o l l e c t i v e l y.
El relato de una relación.
To relate is to carry back
a flowing of milk
a grammar in amma
la leche manando, la lengua y el trans
language and love
Hipnótico manar
the music of am
morning and mother
El am
del am
or
not an abstract idea
but a con
ti nui
ty.
“The love that gathers” say
The Mba Guaraní
We are only exiled from the inner
star.
"Love in the genes, if it fails
We will produce no sane man again."
George Oppen
One
Water
and its thirst
are one
Translated by Eliot Weiberger
From La Wik’uña, l990
The Quasar
Light of sound, or sound of light?
Its not-yet-being, its “no ser nada aún” is what attracted me.
Being “almost” a border, an “about to happen.”
A quality that kept me looking for a form
before the form.
Form was not born from an idea.
It was an idea vanishing.
At its birth, the “no” understood and soothed it,
allowing it to be in its undoing.
A poem looking for its being, the quasar can only search
for the sleep of dreams.
A poem only becomes poetry when its structure
is made not of words but forces.
Force is poetry.
Everyone knows what poetry is, but who can say it?
Its nature is to be felt but never apprehended.
Translated by Rosa Alcalá
From Spit Temple, Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012
K’isa /Alangó
s
“A word moves
a bit of air”
—Nachman of Bratzlaw
“God is the essence of the written letters
concealed in the dust of the poet’s pencil”
—Sumana Santaka
To read a text in Thai is tibot tack: to smash it to pieces.
A Tayil, a song is “the only material manifestation of the invisible reality,” the Mapuche say.
“A song melts the boundaries between the worlds” Lawrence Sullivan says.
A vibratory disorder, an incantation bends time itself.
An image too, is an “interference pattern,”a rhythm born at the meeting point of light and eye.
“We don’t see light, we see with the light,” someone says.
A word in the air
lets you
hear the image
see the sound.
In the Andes people say an image hears, a textile sees.
(You don’t put a mask to be seen, but to see with different eyes)
But there is no word for “beauty” (a song must never strike a right note)
you say K’isa instead,
the slow power to transform.
El suave endulzar de una fruta secándose al sol.
A slow drying fruit.
The spectrum at work.
A color gradation is an effort of light to unite shadow and light.
Hate and anger becoming peace and love.
“The rainbow has a motor” they say.
To weave gradations is to weave an illusion, a destello that hits the eye.
“Not to mystify with illusion, but to clarify the role of illusion
in our perception of reality.”
Alangó beauty in Java, is not a noun, but a god, a divine
manifestation.
Simultáneamente arrobado y arrobante, being in ecstasy
creates the state.
K’isa, alangó.
Translated by Rosa Alcalá
POEMS
by Cecilia Vicuña
The Quantum of the Indian
And if I devoted my life
The Unconnected Fiber
The Foot
The Poem Is the AnimaL
Hanging by a Thread
Let the Fable Begin
One
The Quasar
K’isa / Alangó