Poems by Mariela Tax
Translated from the Spanish by Paul M. Worley
Graveyard
And of this cracked body
I’ll make a furrowed plot.
I will make my cracks furrows
and in their depths I will feel
the possibility of germination.
In this body
in these cracks,
in these furrows,
I will sow the sleeping seeds
in my grandmothers’ planting sack.
My body will be a graveyard
for both mourning and the blooming of poems.
My cracks will be
the furrows
that bring me back to life.
Camposanto
Y haré de este cuerpo agrietado
un terreno con surcos.
Haré de mis grietas los surcos
y sentiré en lo profundo de ellas
la posibilidad de la germinación.
En este cuerpo,
en estas grietas,
en estos surcos,
sembraré las semillas que duermen
en el morral de mis abuelas.
Será mi cuerpo un camposanto
ya no solo de penas sino de cantares florecientes.
Serán mis grietas
los surcos
que me devolverán a la vida.
Half woman
I’m half woman, half jaguar,
half clay, half sand,
half coal, half ash,
half rain, half fire
half thread, half weaving,
half sun, half sadness,
half silence, half thunder,
I’m half woman, with a graveyard blooming in my other half.
Mitad mujer
Soy mitad mujer, mitad jaguar,
mitad barro, mitad arena
mitad carbón, mitad cenizas
mitad lluvia, mitad fuego,
mitad hebra, mitad lienzo,
mitad sol, mitad tristeza
mitad silencio, mitad trueno,
soy mitad mujer, en la otra mitad florece un camposanto.
Mariela Tax (Obdulia Mariela Tax Ajtún) is a Maya K’iche’ woman and rural educator from Salcajá, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. She has published in Yomarán Jayatzame: Mujeres Poetas de Xelajú, Salir del engaño ¿200 años? ¡Nada que celebrar! and Lienzo de Fuegos. She published her first collection of poetry, Entre los brazos de la neblina, with Parutz’ Editorial in 2023.
Paul M. Worley is a settler scholar from Charleston, SC, Professor of Spanish and Chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Appalachian State University. Co-edited with Melissa D. Birkhofer, his current project, Return to La Tama: Teresa Martín, Luisa Menéndez, and the Méndez de Canzo Inquiry (1600), will be published with the University Press of Kentucky in 2025.
Back to Table of Contents for Translation and Transition