>> A couple of years ago, I returned again to Puerto Rico
with my wife this time, while there up in the mountains.
Again, this time of town called Jayuya.
We encountered, first of all, the presence of the sense of the Tainos,
the indigenous inhabitants of the island who were obliterated
over the centuries by the Spanish.
And yet, who still can be seen in Puerto Rico through their petroglyphs, the rock carvings,
through many of the words that have found their way into Puerto Rican Spanish and even
through the color of the skin of many people from Puerto Rico.
So while there we'd began to think about that and then an incident occurred
which crystallized everything and it involved a hummingbird.
The poem is called colibrí, which is the Spanish word for hummingbird.
And what I'd like to do is this is a bilingual book,
I'll read it first in Spanish and then in English.
Colibrí.
En Jayuya los lagartijos se dispersan como una flota de canoas verdes ante el invasor.
Los españoles conquistaron con hierro y palabras.
Indio taíno, para el pueblo que tomaba la vida de la lluvia arrojada entre los árboles como
flechas y evaporándose.
Ellos que dejaron huellas en la roca, de ojos y bocas, y en círculos perfectos de espanto.
Y el zumbador fue bautizado colibrí.
Ahora el colibrí se precipita y se estrella entre los muros blancos de la hacienda,
un corazón taíno agitado, frenético,
como si oyera el bramido del Dios de la pólvora por primera vez.
El colibrí, presa paralizada, calle la más pura quietud cuando tus manos lo acopan y lo
alzan por las celosías rojas de la ventana donde se desaparece un paraíso celeste,
un anochecer de coquilles.
Si la historia solo fuera como tus manos.
Colibrí, for Katherine, one year later.
In Jayuya, the lizards scatter like a fleet of green canoes before the invader.
The Spanish conquered with iron and words Indio Taíno for the people who took life
from the rain, the rush through trees like evaporating arrows, who left the rock carvings
of eyes and mouths in perfect circles of amazement.
So the hummingbird was christened Colibrí.
Now the colibrí darts and bangs between the white walls of the hacienda,
a racing Taíno heart, frantic as if hearing the bellowing God of gunpowder for the first time.
The colibrí becomes pure stillness, ceased in the paralysis of the pray.
When your hands cupped the bird and lift him through the red shutters of the window,
where disappears into a paradise of sky, a nightfall of singing frogs.
If only History were like your hands.