WEBVTT

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Well, I want to read
a poem in Nahuatl.

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I conjugated for four years
Nahuatl verse in my mind.

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I went to la UNAM, in Mexico
City, and I studied Nahuatl.

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And I'm very happy that,
when I was a little kid,

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my grandmother taught
me some Nahuatl.

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And so this is
"For Planting Corn,

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an invocation that goes back to
the pre-columbian times and was

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recorded by Hernando
Ruiz de Alarcón in 1629,

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and I translated into English.

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I will read it in
Nahuatl the first stanzas

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and then in English,
the whole poem.

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So it's "For Planting Corn."

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nomatca nehuatl nitlamacazqui
tla xihualhuian nohueltiuh Tonacacihuatl

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tla xihualhuian Tlalteuctli

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And the poem goes on.

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I believe I can only read the
whole poem in Nahuatl when

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I'm actually planting corn.

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But I can read the
whole form in English.

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I myself is spirit in flesh.

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Hear me, Tonacacihuatl, elder
sister, lady of our flesh.

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Hear me Tlalteuctli, Mother Earth.

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On your open hand,
I'm sitting down.

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My elder sister, Tonacachuatl.

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Don't shame yourself.

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Don't grovel.

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Don't laugh at us.

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Tomorrow, or the
day after, I went

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to see, again, the face of
my elder sister, Tonacacihuatl.

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Let her stay in the ground.

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I shall read--

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I shall honor my elder
sister, Tonacacihuatl.

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The next poem is
"For Storing Corn."

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The poem goes, nomatca nehuatl nitlamacazqui
tla xihualhuian nohueltiuh Tonacacihuatl

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I, myself, a spirit in flesh.

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Come forth, elder sister,
lady of our flesh.

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Soon, I shall place you
inside my jade jar.

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Hold up the four directions.

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Don't shame yourself.

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Don't grovel.

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Don't laugh at us.

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You shall be my breath.

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You shall be my cure.

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For me, poor orphan--

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for me, Centeotl, you, my
elder sister, you, Tonacacihuatl.

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And one of the issues I had
when I did these poems--

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they came out in 1992, and
then was again released

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in this collection called
From the Other Side of Night

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published by the University
of Arizona Press.

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I did a poem in this
collection that-- to me, it

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was a poem that opened the
door to a new life for me.