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From: Vol.07 N.01 – Plant Poetics

Ceremony of Love

by Jaime Luis Huenún

Last night the trees loved each other like Indians: podocarp and ulmo, Patagonian oak

and hualletineo and litchi, knot to knot, loved each other

so lovingly, Chilean acorn trees

browned each other’s bark, so many coigües

kissed each other’s roots and beards and new sprouts,

until love awoke

in the birds that had been lulled to sleep

by the feathers of their

own trilling loves.

 

Correspondingly, the huinca shoots

lovingly buried each other, and the chola

waters opened their luminous watershed, naming

each other sip by sip, all alone and telling each other: good waters, lovely

waters, oh but we have been violated, Rahue waters,

weeping swallow, flowery, midwifing and still happy,

streams hopping like hares

over the mountains and hills.

 

And eared doves were soon united

by the same love,

the Inallaos’ green

springs, the Huaiquipáns’ fierce

honeys, the Llanquilefs’ swift

eyes, the breasts of the Relequeos’

thrush, the brown hairs of the Huilitraros’

soapbark tree, the Paillamanques’

new raulí beeches.

 

Huilliche love, last night they loved more

in the middle of the chola grove, under the

perpetual pomegranate Indian sky,

they loved each other, piled up

like water fillies and like lit anchimallén fireballs, in the fragrant

dawn they loved each other,

sweetening the seed just

like clay pots filled with muday.

 

Translated by Cynthia Steele

 

Huilliche: the southern portion of the Mapuche Indigenous people of Chile

Rahue: a river in the Los Lagos region of Chile; in its middle course, it flows through the city of Osorno

huinca: name given by the Huilliches to any outsider to their people, especially an enemy

Inallao, HuaiquipánLlanquilef and Huilitraro: Mapuche last names and lineages

Paillamanque: Lonko Anselmo Paillamanque (d. 2012) was a Huilliche leader who played a key role in creating a network of indigenous parks and in recuperating Mapuche territory, culture and identity

chola: a somewhat derogatory term for mixed-blood castes in the Spanish Empire

anchimallén: mythical Huilliche creatures that take the form of small children and that can transform themselves into flying fireballs, emitting bright light

muday: a fermented drink made of macerated wheat

Translated by Cynthia Steele

Cynthia Steele is Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her translations include Inés Arredondo, Underground Rivers (Nebraska, 1996) and José Emilio Pacheco, City of Memory (City Lights, 2001, with David Lauer). Her translations of other poems by Huenún have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Washington Square Review, Plumwood Mountain, and Plume Poetry. Her translations of other Latin American authors have appeared in The Chicago Review, TriQuarterly, The Seattle Review, Gulf Coast, Lunch Ticket, Journal of Literary Translation, Natural Bridge, Ezra, Southern Review, Exchanges, and Latin American Literary Review.

Published: March 2020
Jaime Luis Huenún

Jaime Huenún Villa, born in Valdivia, Chile in 1967, is an award-winning Mapuche-Huilliche poet whose books include Ceremonias (1999), Puerto Trakl (2008), Reducciones (2012), Fanon City Meu (2018), and La calle Maldestam y otros territorios apócrifos (2016). He has received the Pablo Neruda Prize (2003), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2005), and the Prize from the Chilean National Council on Arts and Culture for best book of poetry published in 2013. He has also edited anthologies of Mapuche poetry, including Epu mari ülkatufe ta fachantü: 20 poetas mapuche contemporáneos (Lom, 2003). Two of his books are available in English translation: Port Trakl (Diálogos, 2008) and Fanon City Meu (Action Books, 2018). Huenún teaches Indigenous poetry at the Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago and works for the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Patrimony, directing the department of Native Peoples of the Metropolitan Region.

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Plumwood Mountain Journal is created on the unceded lands of the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and to elders past, present and future. We also acknowledge all traditional custodians of the lands this journal reaches.

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