ANNA DEENY MORALES
Oh, How Small to be a Child in this World
a rewriting of The Massacre of the Innocents
from the Fleury Playbook
Please read notes on the text here.
This chant was rewritten (not translated) for an immersive opera called LAS MÍSTICAS DE MÉXICO which was commissioned by the IN Series, and co-produced by the Mexican Cultural Institute. LAS MÍSTICAS debuted in March, 2024, in Washington, DC, at the Dupont Circle Underground and the Mexican Cultural Institute; and in Baltimore at Emmanuel Episcopal Church. It was directed by Maribeth Diggle and Tim Nelson, with Music Direction by Tina Chancey and Emily Baltzer. The opera was performed by the Children’s Chorus of Washington as the Innocents; Luz Nicolás as the Narrator, Man-at-arms, and Mother; Shana Oshiro as the Angel; Elizabeth Mondragón as Mary; Hunter Shaner as Joseph; Peter Joshua Burroghs as Herod; Maribeth Diggle as Rachel; Elise Jenkins and Anamer Castrello as the Mothers and Consolatrices. The visual works were created by Marta Pérez García.
I would like to recognize the tremendous work of Celia del Palacio, editor of “Porque la lucha por un hijo no termina” Testimonios de las madres del Colectivo Familias de Desaparecidos Orizaba-Córdoba, published by the Universidad Veracruzana in 2020, with photographs by Daniel GM.
I would like to thank Timothy Nelson, the Artistic Director of the IN Series, for commissioning the work, along with Dr. Mary Ellzey for her expertise and conversation regarding medieval drama.
1.
INNOCENTS
Oh, how small
Oh, how small,
how small to be a child
in this world.
Hold our hands,
hold them so soft;
gentle tender let us play
now here with the other children
Come, they wait for us.
2.
INNOCENTS
All syllables
All syllables are in our mouths now,
all tenderness
tenderness in our hands.
The universe found,
found deciphered
in the mountains, field,
the spirals of our play.
Spirals of play.
3.
MAN-AT-ARMS
Interim Armiger quidam offerat Herodi sedenti sceptrum suum dicens:
That child owns a world
That child,
that child owns a world
you’ll never possess.
She will take your words
and turn them against you.
Hija de puta.
4.
ANGEL
Angelus dicat tribus vicibus Ioseph:
José
José, José, José, work of this land!
5.
ANGEL
Go take your child and wife
Go take your child and wife,
take them through darkness, unseen.
Leave all behind you.
Her future is not here, not now.
Do not try to understand.
She
she has no crime,
except to be.
Your child,
your child must go,
must unlearn this life,
unhear your words.
6.
IOSEPH
Unhomed
Unhomed, unhomed.
Goodbye, goodbye
stitched into our clothes,
onto our mouths.
Goodbye our home.
All of the countries are gone.
Unimagined, unbuilt,
words that never belonged
to our people, our mouths.
My love, where will we go?
7.
MAN-AT-ARMS
This has already been written
This has already been written.
I say, “Herod,”
but I could also say “jefe,” “capo,” “president”:
This child is your enemy.
8.
HERODES: JEFE: CAPO: PRESIDENT: GOD
Incendium
Incendium.
I, I, I, I, I
kill her or I die.
9.
INNOCENTS
Interea inocentes, ad huc gradients post Agnum decantent:
Why have you abandoned us?
Why have you abandoned us?
Have we no place in our homeland?
America, America,
why have you abandoned us?
America,
this is the name of our sorrow,
this is the sound of our loss,
all our love.
Why have you abandoned us?
They will come to take us now.
10.
MAN-AT-ARMS
Armiger suggerat Herodi dicents:
So, I said to the same man
So, I said to the same man
who as I have already explained,
could go by many names,
I said,
“The child you look for now
must be among the other children,
so, take, take them all.”
11.
HERODI
Herodens tradens ei gladium dicens:
Bind them, cover their faces
Bind them, cover their faces,
disappear them.
No one will know.
12.
INNOCENTS
As we went to see our friends
As we went to see our friends,
the men came,
defenseless they took us,
but what had we done?
13.
MOTHERS
Tunc Matres occidentes orent occisos:
We did not know the meaning of goodbye
We did not know the meaning of goodbye that morning.
14.
ANGEL
Postea, iacentibus Infantibus, Angelus ab excels out moneat eos, dicens:
You whose eyes are full of dust
You whose eyes are full of dust,
wake up, American love,
wake up and see.
15.
INNOCENTS
Infantes iacentes:
Why don’t you defend us?
Why don’t you defend us?
Do you not hear or answer,
like God?
16.
ANGEL
You will see, my people
You will see, my people,
that the numbers, the numbers
do not reflect the
reality of this nation.
Have patience.
17.
RACHEL
Tunc inducatur Rachel et due Consolatrices; et stans super Pueros plangat, cadens aliquando, dicens:
Ay! Our children our children,
where
where
have they been taken?
Ay! As we went about the day,
they!
Ay! Could the men not see how young
they
were,
our once playful children!
Ay! How can a mother ever sleep again
when you are gone?
Answer me!
Will no one answer me?
No one will tell us where they are.
Answer!
You have closed every door to my searching
and to my sorrow.
Answer me, for our sweet children,
children are gone!
18.
CONSOLATRICES
Do not, sorrowful Rachel
Do not sorrowful Rachel,
do not most gentle mother,
for the loss of your children,
restrain your weeping.
Although you grieve,
find comfort in tears,
for your children live
among the heavens and the stars.
19.
RACHEL
Item Rachel dolens:
Ay! There is no comfort
Ay! There is no comfort
when our children,
we have no news of them,
no sign of where they are.
The officials said they left us.
Our sons and our daughters
would never leave their homes
their homes.
Oh, our sorrow!
Oh, mothers and fathers
forever forever changed,
unhomed.
Oh, my hands.
Oh, my hands have no purpose,
no one to hold,
no one to home.
This This scream of time.
20.
CONSOLATRICES
Quiet, quiet woman
Quiet, quiet woman,
Rachel, your weeping
does not become you. Your weeping
on the street corners and churches
and bus stops and markets and plazas
bothers us all.
Mother, know your place in time.
Do not disturb what has been written.
21.
RACHEL
Ay! Every child I see
Ay! Ay! Ay!
Every child I see shows me your face!
The streets are filled
with your unreturn!
Come home so I can
sing to you, so I can
put us both to rest.
There is no word for what I am now.
Come mothers like me.
Come enrage your pain.
Find with me our unreturning children.
22.
CONSOLATRICES
Rachel you are playing with fire
Rachel you are playing with fire.
Do not go where you do not belong.
Your place is not among the history of our people.
Keep your sorrow still.
23.
RACHEL
Item Rachel cadens super Pueros:
I will search all my homeland
I will search all my homeland for our children.
I am not afraid
for I have already died.
24.
ANGEL
I will go with you
I will go with you.
Teach us how to unearth their final cries.
25.
PUERI
Oh, why mother
Oh, why mother
did the world receive us
so ferociously?
Please come to take
our bones home
to rest with you.
Then, remember the men who took us
have faces and names.
26.
ANGEL
José
José, José, José, work of this land!
Will you come back to your homeland?
What is there for you now?
Did your child remember
the people she left behind?
27.
IOSEPH
How do we reclaim?
How do we reclaim a land
that was never ours to keep
and does not see a future
for our children
whose spirals of play were the world?
TE DEUM LAUDAMUS
On the 7th of September it rained so much
My daughter spoke with me in the afternoon
and told me she would go out that night
She always told me everything
That’s how it was between us
That day I got home around 10:20 10:25 at night
because I stayed late to work
And it rained so much
When I got home my youngest son said as if nothing
Mami, my hermanita just left
A taxi came for her
Because it rained so much
Among her personal things they found an umbrella
I called her at 10:30 and said Hija, where are you
You know I love you, mami
It rained so much
Then she never came home
In those moments I spent with my other children
my daughter
she my daughter she my daughter my mine
was being hurt was being taken away
and I
I was home
I went to the police weeping and begging for help
They told me my daughter was out drinking
with her boyfriend and had probably left town with him
I wept and wept
I arrived to a church and was there weeping for many hours
begging God to help me
An old woman came to me and said
Don’t cry any more
Go home
The church has been indolent with the families of the disappeared.
The police have been indolent with the families of the disappeared.
The authorities have been indolent with the families of the disappeared.
There is no commitment to us and our children
Stop searching for your children
They’re with God now they say
I went on living
looking
in the center of town the plazas
in neighborhood bus stops buses
There was no one to help me
I walked alone with my other children
Then I began to see the same people at the Red Cross
the Regional Hospital and I asked one of them
Excuse me I just saw you over there
Do you look for someone
Yes my son
Yes my daughter
What do you think of coming with me to work together to find our children
to BUILD together
That’s what I said to them
AND THAT’S HOW THE COLLECTIVES BEGAN
I have another job to do now. And it is to find our children.
I was once a submissive mother.
Now I’m nothing of what I was before.
If my daughter were to see me speak now with the lawyers
with the authorities with the police
speak what I must speak go where I must go
she would say Wow! That’s my Mami!
They took a girl
A girl who studied
She was a girl who was happy
I want people to know there is no justice.
And that WE must BUILD a new place.
Miserere nostri Domine, miserere nostri
WHEN MY MOTHER DIED
THEY TOLD ME I WAS AN ORPHAN
WHEN MY HUSBAND DIED
I BECAME A WIDOW
BUT OUR CHILDREN HAVE BEEN TAKEN
LIKE LAMBS TO THE ALTER OF OUR COUNTRY
AND THIS HAS NO NAME.
In te Domine speravi: non confundar in eternum.
To the Mothers of the Colectivo Familias de Desaparecidos Orizaba-Córdoba
In particular to Aracely Salcedo, mother of Fernanda Rubí,
disappeared September 7, 2012
Anna Deeny Morales is a US-based Latina writer who grew up between Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico. She works in poetry and music as a librettist, translator, and literary critic. Her operas have been supported by the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Georgetown Americas Institute, and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Recent works include Las Místicas de México, an immersive performance dedicated to the more than 110,000 disappeared in Mexico. Created in collaboration with Timothy Nelson, Maribeth Diggle, Tina Chancey, Marta Pérez García, and Emily Baltzer, Místicas debuted in March, 2024 with the IN Series and the Children’s Chorus of Washington at the Dupont Circle Underground and the Mexican Cultural Institute. Commissioned by the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, ZAVALA-ZAVALA: an opera in v cuts, with music by composer, Brian Arreola, made its world debut at the Kennedy Center in 2022 with the IN Series and the Georgetown University Orchestra. ZAVALA-ZAVALA was selected by the Latiné Musical Theater Lab for the 4XLatiné Showcase at the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, NYC, in 2023, and will be performed at Gala Hispanic Theater, Washington, DC, in June, 2024. Recent adaptations of zarzuelas include Gonzalo Roig’s Cecilia Valdés (2018) and La Paloma at the Wall (2019), a new rendition of Tomás Bretón's La verbena de la Paloma. La Paloma's score was adapted by Mexican composer Ulises Eliseo. Both were commissioned by the IN Series and performed at Gala Hispanic Theater. Original works for contemporary dance and theater include La straniera (1997), an adaptation of Medea by Euripides, and Tela di Ragno (1999–2002), inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses. Both were commissioned by Il Balletto di Spoleto and performed in Italy and Spain.
A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow for her translation of Tala by Nobel Laureate, Gabriela Mistral, Deeny Morales's translations of Raúl Zurita’s poetry include Sky Below, Selected Works (Northwestern University Press, 2016), of which she is also the editor; Dreams for Kurosawa (arrow as aarow press, 2011); and Purgatory (University of California Press, 2009). Shearsman Press in London published her translation of Alejandra Pizarnik’s Diana’s Tree in 2020, and Mercedes Roffé’s Floating Lanterns in 2015. Composer Theresa Wong set selections of Floating Lanterns to music during her residency at The Stone, The New School, New York City, in 2018, and for a Long Beach Opera commission in 2020. Deeny Morales has guest edited literary journals such as Almost Island, based in Mumbai, India. Her essays and translations of poetry by Rosabetty Muñoz, Malú Urriola, Diana Bellessi, Idea Vilariño, Marosa di Giorgio, Mirta Rosenberg, Isabel de los Ángeles Ruano, and Idea Vilariño, among others, have appeared in anthologies and journals such as the Paris Review, Mandorla, BOMB, and the Harvard Review. Forthcoming works in translation include Ecopoems, Storm, & Some Fringe Benefits, a volume of selected works by Nicanor Parra, which she has edited and translated for New Directions; and Amanda Berenguer's Identity of Certain Fruits, which will be published by Point Zero Press.
Deeny Morales received a BA in English Literature with a minor in Piano Performance from Shepherd University; an MA in Comparative Literature, with an emphasis on Puerto Rican theater, from Dartmouth College; and a PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Berkeley. She also studied theater and directing at the Accademia Nazionale d'Arte Drammatica, Silvio d'Amico, in Rome, Italy. A Fellow in the Humanities at the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University, her monograph on Latin American and US poetry, Other Solitudes: Essays on Consciousness and Poetry, is forthcoming in 2025.
Deeny Morales was the 2023 Academy of American Poets Judge for the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award. She has also served as judge for the National Translation Award in Poetry, and an expert reader for the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship competition. She chaired the Gabriela Mistral Bilingual Poetry Competition and currently sits on the board of directors of the IN Series.