Wish I had your dad and mom to call when I
was working on Natalia's poem.
I have the English version.
She translated it from Zapotec to Spanish,
and I translated it from Spanish to English.
In Spanish, it is "Espanto Tonto."
Esqueleto enterrado en los labios del río. Hombres que pasan sus huevos sobre la cabeza del miedo.
"Silly Ghost."
"Skeleton buried in the lips of the river,
men who swing their balls over the head of fear."
[LAUGHTER]
And this one was my poem which was so elegantly rendered
in O'odham.
I translated it into Spanish.
So I'm going to read it in both versions here.
And the form I used is sonnet length.
But this is a turn-of-the-century Spanish
literature form called the greguería,
which is a one-line poem created by a writer named Ramón Gómez
de La Serna.
So there are 14 of them.
But I think of this as 14 poems.
Para visitar el río rápidamente, corta una cebolla.
"To visit the river quickly, cut an onion."
La lluvia se cae mojada y se levanta verde.
"Water falls down wet but gets up green."
En el desierto, el agua es el animal que los cazadores pistan primero.
"In the desert, water is the animal hunters track first."
El agua es la sangre de la tierra.
"Water is the blood of the land."
En el agua, las estrellas y los animales se ven uno al lado del otro.
"In water, the stars and the animals
see themselves side by side."
El agua es la manera en que somos todos parientes.
"Water is how we are all related."
Nadie es el dueño del agua—bebe un poco, y trata de mantenerla.
"Nobody owns water.
Drink some and try to keep it."
[LAUGHTER]
El agua gobierna reyes.
"Water rules kings."
Las gotas de lluvia sobre la tierra seca levantan fantasmas.
"Raindrops on the hard dirt make the ghosts rise."
That's an Arizona line.
El agua tararea su canción en piedra.
"Water hums its song into stone."
El agua es la medicina del desierto.
"Water is the desert's medicine."
El agua es la tierra sólida de sueños.
"Water is the solid ground of dreams."
El agua habla, pero tienes que escuchar con tu boca.
"Water speaks, but you must listen with your mouth."
El agua es nuestra lengua común.
"Water is our common language."
[APPLAUSE]