Drinking by Gabriela Mistral

Drinking

 

I remember people’s gestures,

They were gestures of giving me water.

 

In the Valley of Rio Blanco

Where the Aconcagua rises,

I went to drink, I leapt to drink

In the whip of a waterfall

That fell in a stiff mane

And broke white and rigid.

I glued my mouth to the foaming

And the blessed water burnt me,

And for three days my mouth was bleeding

From that drink of the Aconcagua.

 

In the country of Mitla,

A day of cicadas, of sun and of walking,

I bent to a pool and an Indian came

To hold me over the water.

And my head, like a fruit

Was between the palms of his hands.

I drank and what I was drinking

Was my face and his face together

And in a flash I knew

That my race was the flesh of Mitla.

 

On the Island of Puerto Rico

At the time of the blue-filled siesta,

My body at rest, the waves in a frenzy,

And the palms like a hundred mothers,

A little girl gracefully opened

A cocoanut close to my mouth

And I drank as a daughter,

Her mother’s milk, milk of the palmtrees.

And I have drunk no sweeter

With the soul nor with the body.

 

In the house of my childhood,

My mother brought me water.

Between one drink and another,

I looked at her over the jar.

My head I raised higher and higher

The jar sank lower and lower.

And still I keep the valley

I keep my thirst and her look.

This shall be eternity

For we are still as we were.

 

 I remember people’s gestures,

They were gestures of giving me water.

 

(translated by H.R. Hays)