Humberto Ak’abal (1952-2019) was a K’iche’ Mayan poet born in Momostenango, in the western highlands of Guatemala.
I’m that carnivorous bird
that you avoid in common curves
although you desire my maniacal choir presence
you continue to fear an extinction
At the entrance, a cluster of burly plants swayed in the wind. Tiny white flowers have sprung up on a pile of dead stems, and it all hums together, collapsing in on itself. Here––I’ll see it later on myself––you love plants, especially rotting or withering ones. . .
Moga woke with a heavy head, her eyes full of sleep and sari damp with sweat. Immediately she felt a strong urge to lie back next to her son on the mat and enjoy the drowsiness of that hot morning.But the thought of the cashews, which had gone unpicked for two days, made her spring to her feet. . .
it was a morning i will never forget, the morning i opened the door to the sound of them shouting,
let us march forward,
they always began with the same line,
the social scientists said of the onslaught of the sightless humans
The night before the wedding she’d tried on her wife’s floral party dress, which was of course too tight and too short on her. That she did this—putting a dash of rouge on her cheeks, a black line on her eyelids—might have caused consternation, but her bride-to-be just found it (so she said) funny. [. . .]
One day, before Jassim’s death, Warqa, the dearest of his pigeons, landed above the cote and entered through the tower’s upper entrance, there in the Ashar district in southern Iraq. It was a bit after three in the afternoon when Jassim glimpsed the two wings beating slowly and descending. It was her, Warqa, returning home three years after she had set out on her journey [. . .]
The small white flowers are everywhere, you know. They splinter, then splinter again. I wonder if vulnerability isn’t entirely compromised. Just yesterday someone posted a story about people who’ve jumped off the Golden Gate. And lived.
The sun rises. Everything goes on looking iconic [. . .]
Berlin was one of the first cities I ever visited in Germany, and since then, I’ve been fascinated by its East/West history and the legacy of that period. I was immediately captivated by Sungs Laden because it touches on a less-known aspect of East German history.[…]
The sap of the plantains stains your clothes, hard to get them clean afterwards. During the preparations, the rain continues to fall. You open the kitchen window. The smell of wet earth mingles with that of the fritters or the plantains cut into thin slices before being plunged in hot oil.[…]
Panama, on this street and in this time we’re missing, Before my days and nights (And from this poem) oscillating like water between lilies, With its fortified walls and buildings[…]
Like frightened birds after a hunter’s shot—My dreams scatter in flight when I open up my eyes[…]
The nun, Sister Hui, was very mysterious.
No one knew her family, or if she had one. No one knew whether she’d been raised rich or poor, educated or uneducated, in a village or in the capital city […]
A crack is stained with the fog that begins on the plain.
The green of the curved jade grants transparency but also denies it:
leaves of thick dye, aroma that descends
clamoring at this somewhat empty start, condemned
from dye to aroma, peach that coats […]
The Clay of Time has Grown Soft The clay of time has grown soft. The kneading of sunset after sunset has made it rise. A tiny grain of sand has suddenly split open in a dream to dispel a mystery, and only the owl weeps from a silver lock of tangled hair. The dead have […]
[translated poetry] I drank coffee with your devastated parents or something we called coffee: were you already different when we sat across from each other in my kitchen and you didn’t want to eat anything except a piece of chocolate, did you already have an eye on the reeds? I can’t tell .. was that […]
[translated poetry] He was the same as other people who know nothing about the white gray glass: about the flat drop of sameness in a frame of white-lacquered window like a gray block of longing lying in a day rectangle of colored dough of encounters. He has installed the window panes in a gray […]
[bilingual poetry] The first cable-car ride brings him before tourists, far above the daily concerns, where a trail climbs and winds in the shades of ancient woods. A trunk and moss can be heard, but many a tree leaf is gasping, when the largest deer on earth stops at six yards, watching. From top to […]
[translated poetry] V Fresheur and life “Same current, waters always new” The voice runs over the waters ++++++++++speeches crossed from god to god +++++sorcerous heritage, seaswells burgeoning +++++with careful lightness ++++++++++same as +++++same as grass crown, thatch, lalang; water crystalline, upslope downslope harmony, +++++++++++++++that the spirits’ good humor won’t cloud. Begone-become, begone as foam +++++++++++++++leaving […]
[translated fiction] “The wolf tone is a musical paradox. An atonality we suffer in the name of harmony.” One of the trees has bloomed early. In the park in front of the conservatory. Dabs of pink along a dark core. What are they called? Cherry blossoms, you’d say. You’re all grown up now. Later I […]
[translated fiction] The first thing he recognized were José Luis’s mannerisms. He remembered the way he’d sit on the bench and chew the little pink eraser on his pencil. Maybe if he tried hard enough he’d be able to remember every part of the school: the sticky hallways, the fossilized gum stuck under the long […]
Sister My sister is sitting on the bank of a ploughed field, catching the last grains like fish. The black earth is agitated, spattering poisonous salt throwing foam beneath the blackthorn bush. I go up to her, bent and old, sobbing, so she pities me, saying, “Look, I’m cold, I’ll die.” And she answers me, […]
“Tell your father not to stay out there in the chill; it’ll make him sick.” Actually, it was warm on the patio. The sun already hung low in the sky, but it was still two hours until dark. And the fence around the house shielded don Antonio Nemiña from the winds loaded with dust and […]
The Fetus of the Dream Dream fetuses. And in the fetus dream, like a growing amplified silence— like ivy around nothing: I dreamed last night. I dreamed of wet ivy— wet like water and rapidly growing— water that smells like old wine in the deepest treasure beneath the earth, where the spider danced the figure […]
Danica Mae The President’s helicopter will never land near your barangay. He will never walk up to your mother’s house, dust his shoes off before stepping through the door. He’ll never look around where you kept your toys. His eyes won’t linger on your clothes as they hang or lay folded, now separate from the […]
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Humberto Ak'abal's website
©Violette Bule
Photo by Yasha Strongin
Credit: Test Test
Photo credit: Elisabeth Mohn
Photo Credit Georges Seguin (Okki) — Travail personnel, CC BY-SA 3.0
Michael Milberger