YANA LUCI LEMA
Translated from Spanish by Gloria E. Chacón
Yana Luci Lema is a Kichwa teacher and poet from Otavalo (Ecuador). Author and compiler of several bilingual poetry collections and anthologies. Her poems have been translated into English, Italian, French and Korean. She appears in various Abya Yala magazines. She is the coordinator of the Muyu OraLiterary Cultural Library project which values, promotes and gives voice to the literary wealth of Abya Yala, rescuing the oral memory and poetic myths of the 14 groups of Indigenous peoples of Ecuador.
WATER
drizzle
rain falls
hail
offer us
her sweet mist
her sweet echo
full of poetry
spirit of the river
spirit of the sea, they dance
through us runs water
that purifies
once again and again I venerate you
long live mother water, long live!
Lagoon
The elders say that when a lagoon is hungry it starts to complain
And that we must provide prayers and offerings so that she receives us with a smile
White paper
What is the waterfall on Black Heart Mountain?
The place where rituals were performed to call for rain
Tenderness
I believe in water
in the grey clouds that my eyes await to meet yours
to gather mushrooms in my mother’s land
Site of our memory
I believe in water
in the light born on your skin
in your eyes
Site of our tenderness
I believe in water
that speaks to me in dreams
that brings to me the eternal river of your gaze
Site of our pact
Artist's statement
My town is the Kichwa community of Peguche. It was also called the town of the waterfall because there is a waterfall. We also have a river and lagoons, which have their own poetic myths. Poems of water are memories of my relationship or communication with water and the memory about it.
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