Here's a classic love poem.
I'll read it in Navajo first and then in English.
There's usually this teasing going on between.
In Navajo, how we relate to people
allows us to tease one another in certain ways.
So grandparents, the grandmother and the grandson,
they can pretend they're boyfriend and girlfriends,
and tease one another that way.
And that's what I mean by a classic love poem,
is the Navajo version.
So I will read that to you as soon as I find it.
It disappeared on me.
A year in a Navajo home, it's one of them, the beauty of it
is that the teasing between the grandfather,
and the granddaughter and the grandmother and the grandson.
And I always really enjoy that.
Well, here it is.
My thumb was on it.
It's called [NAVAJO].
[SPEAKING NAVAJO]
There are two references that you need to be aware of,
woman who makes you skinny is this young maiden who
becomes so beautiful, and that young men
that were attracted to her.
And then she takes him home.
And then at night, the cliff on which she lived
rises into the sky, and she becomes an ugly hag.
And then she starves her lovers.
And then the other one is the boy
whose house is made of feathers, is about a young boy,
who has sores all over.
But with the help of her grand mothers,
he went into the heavens to the house of white lightning, who
was performing a ceremony and end up taking out
12 of his wives.
So the references are to that.
"Yesterday, I listened to the radio
and heard a little boy sing a beautiful song.
She was wearing a beautiful buckskin, he's saying.
She was wearing a beautiful beaded moccasin, he's saying.
Hey, little boy, come here.
Let me tell you the story of the woman who makes you skinny.
Hey, little boy, where are you going?
I chuckled as I thought back to a time pass
when I heard an old lady sing not a so beautiful song.
Although he was ugly, I made him my lover, she's saying.
Now, you want to come back, she's saying.
Hey, old lady, come here.
Tell me the story of the boy whose
house is made of feathers.
Hey, old lady, where are you going?
The woman who makes you skinny, the boy
whose house is made of feathers return, return, come here,
come here, where are you?
Where are you?"