This poem I'll read is called "The Stone Shaped by Song,"
and it honors all the women that brought us here today that would
have to grind corn.
And we had our own grinding songs and our clans.
And all our clans were brought here.
And those songs are in the wind now.
Some are still being sung, but this
gives tribute to the actual grinding stone that
are still here with us today.
"The Stone Shaped by Song."
"Only once, at dawn, I unearthed a grinding stone,
beneath a dirt floor at the old horse corral, she sang
ya ah-nah clan songs when there were those songs
in the field, now barren and bursting with tumbleweeds,
the land parched as potted polenta or peeled paint.
Her skin, black lava.
Her hair, shelled white corn.
Her body curved like a half-moon crescent.
Her face
rounded smooth had thin from wear like sand
the oceans washed ashore in the rise and fall of tide,
on Hawaiian black beach, the flavor of Salt Woman,
red seaweed and slender green, sheet-drunee yaka
heirloom corn seed, planted on a warm autumn day,
sprouts then fades as songs wither into stillness or bushes
of sumac berries in the abandoned field, red fruit
the deer
devour, tart and tangy as hibiscus lemon tea.
A mist arises when the stone recalls the clan women's voices.
Singing her songs, she remembers the rhythmic milling sound
of mano and metate.
She craves, cornmeal and ground wheat.
She cherishes the last song sung to her.
She hums forgotten
tunes.
I lift her up and say "come home with me,
rest in Cusco's garden.
Sing with me."
Dáwaeh, [haupa?].
Thank you.
[CHEERING, APPLAUSE]