First Voices
—
The Hummingbird
At dawn, he says hello to the sun. When night falls, he works nonetheless. He goes on buzzing about from branch to branch, from flower to flower, quick and inevitable as light itself. Sometimes he’s doubtful and stands still in mid-air, suspended; sometimes he flies backward, as no one else can. And sometimes he goes around a little drunk, from drinking too much of the corolas’ honeys. When he flies, he throws off whirlwinds of color.
He brings messages from the gods, becomes a bolt of lightning to carry out their revenges, and blows the prophecies of the clairvoyant into your ear. When a Guaraní child dies, he saves its soul, which he lays out in the chalice of a flower, and then takes the soul in the long peak of his bill toward The Land of No Evil. He has known that road since the beginning of time. Before the world was born, he was there: he cooled the mouth of The First Father with drops of dew and eased hunger with the nectar of flowers. He led the long wanderings of the Toltecs toward the sacred city of Tula, before delivering the warmth of the sun to the Aztecs.
As the captain of the Chontals, he soared above enemy camps, figured out their forces, plunged down in a nosedive, and killed the chieftain as he slept. As the sun of the Kekchis, he flew toward the moon, surprised it in its bedchamber, and made love to it.
His body is the size of an almond. He is born from an egg no larger than a bean, in a nest that would fit into a walnut. He sleeps in the shelter of a little leaf.
Translation ©2024. Terence Clarke. All rights reserved.
—
Note: No Plagiarism Software, also known as Artificial Intelligence, was used in this translation.
About Eduardo Galeano? click here. For a selection of Galeano’s books, click here. For my recent Substack piece that tells of Galeano, click here.
“Terence Clarke: Recovering The Arts” columns are free of charge. Subscribe to them here. Or, if you wish, you can help us financially with a paid subscription at $5.00 per month or $50.00 per year. That, too, can be done here. It’s your call.
We will not share information about your subscription with anyone.