Temblor
Mi tierra tiembla. La Pachamama está herida
en la chakra de la corteza. Tiembla
en la mitad del mundo. Tiembla en Catequillas,
la mitad del equinoccio, y nadie lo conoce.
Extraen el shungo de piedra sin parar.
Rasgan el monte, lo pican, lo destruyen.
Un cerro atropellado por la cantera.
Herido, violado, rajado.
Un cerro transgredido por la minería china.
Un lugar sagrado donde la luna y el sol hacen el amor.
Un lugar sagrado, donde los astros dibujan el sur y el norte.
Un lugar sagrado. Un espejo astral. Un reflejo de las galaxias.
Un templo solar, sagrado. Donde Dios no tiene cuerpo.
El nombre solar viste el tiempo.
Un lugar sagrado, violado.
La Pachamama grita y se estremece.
La tierra tiembla, y el cielo se afirma.
Se raja la corteza. Hay tres fallas.
La hierba titubea.
Hay silencio agrónomo.
La tierra tiembla. Tiembla.
Las tres fallas tiemblan.
Nuestro ser tiembla.
Nuestros miedos de raíz profunda tiemblan.
La tierra en la mitad del mundo se estremece.
Y nos arroja al origen de una pausa.
Trembling
The land trembles. The Pachamama erupts in pain
in her red root chakra. She pulses
in the middle of the world. She quakes in Catequillas,
the center of the equinox, a hidden place.
They strip open pits of sulphide rocks non-stop.
They rip the mountains, wound and destroy.
The hill is gutted by the quarry.
Injure, violate, split apart.
Chinese mines transgress the hill.
A sacred valley where sun and moon make love to each other.
A sacred valley, where stars attract the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
A sacred valley. An astral mirror. A reflection of the galaxies.
A solar temple, sacred. Where God does not have a body.
The solar name is clothed in time.
A sacred place raped.
The Pachamama screams and shakes.
The earth trembles and the sky affirms.
The cortex cracks. Three faults palpitate.
The grass quivers.
The farmland shudders in silence.
The divine earth trembles. Trembles.
The three faults tremble.
Our being also trembles.
The deep root of our fear trembles.
Earth Mother jolts in the center of the world.
Such a sensation ejects us to the origin of a pause.
Ancestros de los ríos
I
Los pasos no son pasos
son retazos de un arcoíris esfumado.
No asumamos nada
si no entendemos lo grande que es el desierto
no nos incluyan
no nos excluyan
de las raíces de la sombra.
No nos toca descifrar el olvido
ni las cuencas de la ciénega.
No nos incluyan
no nos excluyan
del regreso de los pájaros
que queman sus fantasías en un infinito orgásmico.
II
Mi orígenes vienen de los ríos.
Mis deletreos acuosos son más antiguos
que el más sabio musgo que crece entre las rocas.
Quiero pertenecer
a un mundo donde el líquido de la sabiduría
brote en mi cuerpo
donde camino sobre hojas que se revuelcan en el vértigo
de un bosque lleno de semillas
donde los brazos y manos
abrazan el agua quemada.
Los pasos son mis huellas
de mi infancia
en todos los ríos de fuego
están los mapas de todos mis ancestros.
Ancestors from the River
I
Footsteps are not steps,
they are vapor of a vanished rainbow.
Let us not assume anything—
if we do not understand the intensity of the desert,
do not include us
do not exclude us
from the roots of the shadow.
We do not have to decipher forgetfulness;
not even in the basins of the swamps.
Do not include us
do not exclude us
from the return of the birds
who burn their fantasies in an infinite orgasm.
II
My origins come from rivers.
My fluid spellings are older
than the wisest moss that grows between the rocks.
I want to belong
to a world where the liquid wisdom
sprouts in my body,
where I can walk on top of spinning leaves in a vertigo
forest full of seeds,
where arms and hands
embrace burnt water.
My steps are footprints
of my childhood
found at the bottom of all rivers of fire
where the maps of my ancestors lie.
Mondongo
El Mondongo o caldo de patas
se saborea con mote
y hojas caducas al romper la aurora.
El sabor del maní y del orégano perfuma
la esencia de los dedos del sol venidero.
El Chulla quiteño, esa tonada que seduce la piel de las faldas
del Pichincha, de la Virgen del Panecillo,
tan andina esa música que va desde la Plaza Grande
a la Guarahua donde se levantan la falda
y yerguen el pañuelo de las espinas diarias del trajín
bajo la luz de la luna.
Soy el reflejo de los siglos.
Soy el principio del tiempo.
Volver es necesario,
antes de que los árboles sean árboles
y que las sombras se muden a otra tierra.
Mondongo
The mondongo or beef feet soup
is savored with hominy
and worn out leaves at the break of dawn.
The flavor of roasted peanuts and oregano perfumes
the essence of fingers drenched in the future sun.
The “El chula quiteño,” a song that seduces the skin of the foothills,
Pichincha, and the winged Virgin from El Panecillo,
the music so Andean it flows to the Plaza Grande
and to the Guarahua where the skirt is lifted
and the handkerchief is waved between the thorns of daily busyness
under the light of the moon.
Air is expelled from the lungs.
I reflect the centuries,
the depth of the beginning of time.
Returning is necessary,
especially before trees exist as trees
and the shadows migrate to another soil.
Ivonne Gordon Carrera Andrade was born in Ecuador. She is a poet, literary critic, and literary translator. She has a Ph.D. in Latin American Literature, and a University Professor in her field of research. She has published eight books of poetry, a book of critical essays on Gabriela Mistral. Has been invited to participate in International poetry festivals, anthologies and literary journals, and her work is recorded at the Library of Congress, and holds a Fulbright Scholar award. Has won several important prizes among them the Jorge Carrera Andrade Poetry Award in Ecuador, First Prize Poetry International Contest, Hespérides.
Cindy Rinne creates art and writes in San Bernardino, CA. Cindy is the author of several books: Mapless with Nikia Chaney (Cholla Needles Press), Moon of Many Petals (Cholla Needles Press), Listen to the Codex (Yak Press), Breathe In Daisy, Breathe Out Stones (FutureCycle Press), and others. She is a founding member of PoetrIE, a literary community and a finalist for the 2016 Hillary Gravendyk Prize. Her poetry appeared or is forthcoming in: Birds Piled Loosely, CircleShow, Home Planet News, Outlook Springs, The Wild Word (Berlin), Storyscape Journal, Cholla Needles, Event Horizon Magazine,several anthologies,and others. Her translations of Ivonne Gordon Carrera’s poems have been published internationally. www.fiberverse.com