Poems for Mamis and Bebes: Gabriela Mistral’s Poemas de las Madres/ The Mothers’ Poems

Hola! I'm encantada to be a contributor to the LBBC! Over the last couple of weeks, I've gone back and forth a dozen times on what to blog about here- there's so much to read and write it's hard to know where to start. But, after all my brainstorming, what I kept coming back to was my first literary love- poetry. In my posts, I hope to introduce you to some fantastic bilingual poetry that I hope you'll share with your family.

To start us off, I bring you the first bilingual poetry collection that really spoke to me as a new mami- Gabriela Mistral's Poemas de las Madres/ The Mothers' Poems (translated by Christiane Jacox Kyle). It grabbed me with this poem:

La dulzura

Por el nino dormido que llevo, mi paso se

ha vuelto sigiloso. Y e religioso todo mi

corazon, desde que lleva el misterio.

Mi voz es suave, como una sordina de

amor, y es que temo despertarlo.

Con mis ojos busco ahora en los rostros

el dolor de las entranas, para que los demas

miren y comprendan la causa de mi mejilla

empalidecida.

Hurgo con miedo de ternura en las

hierbas donde anidan codornices. Yo voy

por el campo silenciosa, cautelosamente:

Creo que los arboles y cosas tienen hijo

dormidos, sobre los que velan inclinados.

Sweetness

Because of the sleeping child I carry, my

step has become secretive. And my whole

heart is holy since it began carrying this

mystery.

My voice is soft, like a mute love song,

and it's because I'm afraid of awakening

him.

Now my eyes search faces for the sorrow

deep inside, so that the others may look and

understand the reason for my pale cheeks.

With fear born out of tenderness, I search

through the grasses where the quail make

their nests. And I go through the field

silently, cautiously: I believe trees and all

things have sleeping children whom they

hover over, keeping watch.

In the introduction, Mistral writes about the incident that inspired the collection, when she saw a pregnant village woman be insulted by a man walking by. She writes she went away thinking,

"One of us ought to speak of the sacredness of this painful and divine condition. If the purpose of art is to make everything beautiful with an immense mercy, why haven't we purified, for the eyes of the impure, this? And I wrote these poems with an almost religious intention."

Efectivamente, these are poems that you need to read with your heart broken open by baby love; poems that can't help but describe that singular wonderstruck state of motherhood.

Gabriela Mistral's Poemas de las Madres are the first things I ever read to each of my kids, rocking them in my arms in the nursery's half-light, breathing each word into their hair. I read them each poem en espanol, then in English, showing them, if their eyes were open, the breathtaking artwork by Chilean painter Sara Adlerstein Gonzalez that accompany the text. Some nights, I read only one poem, over and over again, like a prayer; other nights, I'd read half the collection. Exhausted as I was those moments, I couldn't help but feel it was a blessing to start them off with such beautiful poetry. Even still, re-reading this collection a few years after first finding it, I'm powerfully reminded of that mystic element that surrounds motherhood, particularly of how it's expressed in our cultura.

Though poetry can have an intimidating reputation, these poems will feel like wisdom from a trusted comadre. If you're an expecting or new mami, read them to yourself, to your baby; give them to your own mami, too. Just as I did, I trust you'll enjoy reveling in this poesia while you hold your nenes close.