I thought a place to start would be with the poem that was
printed in the --
in the booklet of the poetry series this year.
This is a poem called "Jatun Sacha,"
which is the name of a botanical reserve in the Ecuadorian
Amazon.
I was there because one of my sons was working there.
And sits on the Rio Napo river outside the village of Tena
in a region that's almost entirely Quechan.
And during my stay there, one of the amazing things to me
was people singing and this is the poem about the Jatun Sacha.
"First, she was singing, then it was a gold thing
her singing and her bending, she was singing
and a gold thing was selving, it was a ringing
before there was a bell.
Before there was a bell, there was the bell, notwithstanding,
standing or sitting sometimes at night or in the day when they
worked they hummed, and made their voices high,
and made sounds.
It was the ringing they hadn't heard yet singing, though they
had heard it ringing.
When Casamiro's daughter went to the river
and picked arum leaves, and wet them, and rubbed them together,
they made the one sweet note that was the ringing.
It was the one note cry of a bee-eating bird
with pale blue crest.
And when the first one made the ringing with the arum
leaves and the others heard that the arum leaves were
the bee-eating bird, they laughed, their laughter rang.
And the young guys who worked metal,
they liked it best at night when the iron glowed,
and the sparks showered down, and he struck metal
against metal in the glowing.
He fashioned when he fashioned for adornment or for praying
or for killing.
And he knew the made things from the ringing,
which was the arum leaves and the sounds made in love
and the bee-eating bird and the humming.
She sang like that, something of keening and something
of laughing, Earth cries, and a gold thing ringing."