First Voices
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The Milky Way
The worm, no larger than your pinky, ate the hearts of birds. His father was the best hunter of the Mosetén people of Bolivia.
The worm grew. Soon he had the size of an arm, and every time he demanded more hearts. The hunter spent the entire day in the forest, killing for his son. When the serpent no longer fit in their little shack, the forest was emptied of its birds. The father, his arrow well-aimed, offered him the hearts of jaguars.
The serpent devoured them and grew. Now, there were no more jaguars in the forest.
“I want human hearts,” the serpent said.
The hunter left his little village with no people as well as all the surrounding regions until one day, in a faraway region, many people surprised him sitting on the branch of a tree, and they killed him.
Pestered by hunger and nostalgia, the serpent went looking for him.
He coiled his body about the guilty region, so that no one could escape. The men shot off all their arrows against the enormous ring he had put in place around them. Withal, the serpent kept growing.
Nobody survived. The serpent retrieved his father’s body and continued growing.
Up there, you can see him rolling about, bristling with luminous arrows, passing through the night.
Translation ©2023. Terence Clarke. All rights reserved.
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About Eduardo Galeano? click here. For a selection of Galeano’s books, click here.
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