DANIELA CATRILEO
Piwke Heart
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 Maribel Mora Curriao here and Yeny Díaz Wenten here.
Tañi Piwke (my heart)
Piwke heart
oh, beat my piwke heart
after twenty years
I realized that my heart
beats to another name
the sound of its voice
was denied to me
until I woke up
amid its thunder
beat
my piwke heart
my piwke
piwke heart.
Diaspora
This wild grass has grown
in the expanse of the journey
in the sow sometimes
seeds are lost.
Grabbed a backpack and left
with what was left from the severance package
I bought a bus ticket and a sack of potatoes.
On the bus I listen to rancheras
and the voice of other passengers
while the conductor checks the tickets:
Collihuin Catrileo Cayuman
we are majority, I think.
I look past the night
a low fog under the highway lights
–It’s my stop– I tell the driver.
–It’s a conflict zone– he replies.
I smile and load onto my shoulder
the ten kilos.
Before getting on
you gave me a notebook
on the first page you wrote:
the bridge we built.
Later I lost your face
in the crowd.
I waved good bye
like in a rogation
not knowing if I’d return.
Returning
like someone continuing the journey
of the names of the missing
to honor the ashes
and to weave the cloth
to the copse of memory
I cross the boardwalk
A patrol car
is waiting at the other side
I walk down unafraid
until I reach the tiny store
I manage to cross
without being checked
I send out a text:
I’ve returned.
A yellow light
plastic mantel piece
some garlands are hanging
the TV is on
I leave my backpack on the table
the air is heavy
with stir-fry
My eyes examine
the cracks on the wall,
waiting for someone to take my order.
A woman comes
I ask for a beer.
–You are not from around here, she says.
How do I respond to that?
As I write this, she brings a coffee
and disappears again.
Daniela Catrileo (1987) is a Mapuche poet and teaches philosophy in Santiago. She is a founder of the Mapuche art collective Rangiñtulewfü dedicated to critical works on feminism, racism and decolonization. She is the author of four poetry collections, a short story collection and a novel. The poems included in this selection come from the book “El territorio del viaje” (The Journey’s territory), published by Archipielago ediciones in 2017. It discusses the subtle rituals and transformations that are set in motion once the speaker must return from the city to the native land, considering not only the cultural tension experienced but the political tension with the nation state.
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.