EmaBee Inspiration: Humberto Ak'abal

Emily W.

January 28

Happy Humberto Ak'abal Day!

Humberto Ak'abal Day was on January 28, so this post is a little late, but still worth celebrating.

He is a Maya K'iche' poet from Guatemala. According to Wikipedia, he began writing his poetry in Spanish because he was 'illiterate' in his mother tongue, but eventually started to write in K'iche'. He translated his own poems into Spanish to make them more accessible to a wider audience, but was only able to find a publisher willing to print his work in K'iche' in 1993.

You can find his website at akabal.com, which has a few of his poems in K'iche', Spanish, and English. The poem "Distance" is particularly powerful.

There are several of his poems here, I think my favorite being:

Oración

En los templos
sólo se oye la oración
de los árbolesconvertidos en bancas.

Prayer

In church
the only prayer you hear
comes from the trees
they turned into pews.

Also, another poem which I really like is the "Al Despertar" or "The Awakening," which touches on both the Christian creation myth and the Mayan creation myth. The rib references the story of Adam and Eve, and God taking a rib from Adam to create eve, while the body made of clay and corn references the Mayan creation story that the Creator made beings of wood, clay, and finally humans out of corn.

Al Despertar

Un dia
el Creador me vio sólo,
muy sólo.

Me hizo dormir,
me hizo soñar,
bajo una mata de milpa

y me arrancó una costilla…

Al despertar,
frente a mi
—rechula, desnuda, de barro y de maiz,
con olor a monte—

mi poesía.

Awakening

One day
the Creator saw me alone,
so alone.

He made me sleep,
he made me dream
out in the fields of maize,

and he wrenched a rib out of me…

Upon waking,
in front of me
—gorgeous, naked, made of clay and corn,
scented like a mountain—

my poetry.

I also really identify with his poem "Jaguar" because of the embodiment of the Jaguar and connection to nature. The Jaguar, b'alam in K'iche' is a sacred animal for the Maya. This is the glyph for B'alam:

Jaguar

Otra veces soy jaguar,
corro por barrancos,
salto sobre peñascos,
trepo montañas.

Miro más allá del cielo
más allá del agua,
más allá de la tierra.

Platico con el sol,
juego con la luna,
arranco estrellas
y las pego a mi cuerpo.

Mientras mueve la cola,
me hecho sobre el pasto
con la lengua de fuera.

Jaguar

Sometimes I'm a jaguar
running through ravines,
leaping boulders,
climbing mountains.

I look beyond the sky,
beyond the water,
beyond the earth.

I chat with the sun,
play with the moon,
and pluck stars
and stick them to my body.

My tail stirs as I
stretch out on the grass,
tongue panting.

I think I connect to this poem so much because I like to imagine myself as a plant or animal and write from that perspective. I like to write about that deep connection, like in my poem "If I Keep Walking in the Woods Forever."

To learn more about Humberto Ak'abal, check out this write up here.

[Graffiti along a roadway -"For the defense of the water, the earth, and the land. Yes to life" - Guatemala, 2008.]