MARIBEL MORA CURRIAO

Innominable Cities

Translated by Rodrigo Rojas Bollo

The Mapuche are a native nation of South America that has lived in the central valley of Chile and in the grasslands across the Andes, in Argentina. Their language, Mapudungun, has been studied since the Spanish and other Catholic Missions were established in the region and admired only by a few dedicated scholars throughout the centuries. From their very first contact with the Spaniards in the 1540’s they have been fighting for the survival of their culture. The poets in this selection challenge the central cannon of poetry in Chile by expanding the sensibility and cultural references in the poetic repertoire. Part of the linguistic and artistic resources that they use are a particular syntax, words in Mapudungun and references to the experience of displacement, among others.

Read works by two other Mapuche poets Daniela Catrileo here and Yeny Díaz Wenten here.

I.

In the beginning it was the lights 
                                        and wails of the cities.

And the nomad men and women saw 
                                        that cities were good 
but also saw that cities could be dreadful.

And so it was that cities were divided 
into common
                                        and innominable cities
So that wandering men and women 
                                        would never
mistake one for the other.

Common cities were peopled 
by common men and women 
who fathered and mothered common children.

And innominable cities were peopled 
by man and women that no one remembers.

II.

There are cities that should not be named.
                                        Evoking those streets may bring disgrace 
that’s the origin of all anguish and all evil.

You should avoid those cities like the plague.

Don’t let the lights reach you.
                                        Don’t be enchanted by their chants.
Even dreaming about some cities may leave you wounded.

Parks and avenues of those cities should be abandoned 
                                        before taking the first step.

There are cities where dreams 
                                        can’t be conceived.
Cities with conventional harbors
                                        that will only cloud you.
Cities with nights and parks 
that conceal enforced disappearances, grandchildren
                                        taken at sunset or dawn.

No one remembers their names.
                                        All foundations soaked in blood.

III.

There were no king of kings in those cities
                                        no theatre or epic to crown them.

Firewater poured in the cup of dispossession, yes
bad omens in the pewma dreamt by the grandparents.

Our songs became monotonous
                                        and our rites profane
                                        our thinking feral
and our tongue, in those streets, 
                                        a barbaric tongue.

A laurel wreath to all your belongings.
A thicket covered all that was mine.
All that comes from you is a homage.
                                        All of me a disgrace.

So far and so close from each other!
In a landscape as terrible as it is poetic. 

IV.

And we had to hide our own robes 
and we had to hide our words 
and we became nothing but shadows 
in this world too white 
                                        for our hands.

And meanwhile, blood between our fingers, 
meanwhile, blood in between our eyes,  
blood in our footsteps, meanwhile.
Sweat. Acquiescent silence. 
                                        Grinding our teeth 
                                        a city peopled by squeals.

Maribel Mora Curriao (1970) is in charge of the Diversity and inclusion program in Universidad de Chile and is part of the council to the Unesco lecture on Higher Learning and Indigenous People. She is a Mapuche poet that has represented her nation in international poetry festivals and other cultural instances. The selection of poems translated here belong to her second poetry collection titled “Las ciudades innombrables” (The Unnameable Cities) published on 2024 by Andesground ediciones. The speaker of these poems confronts the city as it were a place of permanent exile for generations.

Rodrigo Rojas, b. 1971, is a Chilean poet and translator. He is a graduate from NYU’s MfA where he worked with Philip Levine, Derek Walcott, Sharon Olds and Elizabeth Alexander, among other poets. He is the author of two books of essays and four poetry collections, the latest is “Estrella de la mañana” (Garceta ediciones, 2016). His translations into English are available in Barbaric, Vast & Wild (Black Widow Press, 2015); and in journals in the United States, Mexico, South Africa, Peru, Spain and Chile. As a contributing editor to Rattapallax Magazine, from 2003 to 2009, he constantly published poets from South America in translation. He is currently  collaborating with visual artists in creative projects and curatorship. Among these projects is the Mapuche artist Francisco Huichaqueo who explores pottery shattering and the language of dreams as a creative practice of resistance. He is also part of the art collective Setebos that develops a transdisciplinary creative practice across Patagonia, and part of the faculty in the Creative Writing program at Diego Portales University, Santiago.