First Voices
—
The Turtle
When the waters of The Deluge came down, a sea of mud appeared in the Oaxaca valley.
A fistful of mud came to life and began walking. Very slowly, The Turtle walked. He went about with a stretched-out neck and very open eyes, discovering the world that the sun had brought back to birth once more.
In one place that smelled very bad, The Turtle saw The Buzzard devouring cadavers.
“Take me up to heaven,” he pleaded. “I want to meet God.”
It was asking a lot of The Buzzard. The dead bodies were very tasty. The Turtle had stuck out his head to make the request, and he wished now to put it back beneath his shell, because he could not bear the smell.
“You, who have wings, take me up,” he begged.
Filled with all he had mooched, The Buzzard opened up his enormous black wings and set out flying with The Turtle on his back.
They went on, passing through clouds, and The Turtle, hiding his head, complained:
“What a bad stench!”
The Buzzard seemed deaf.
“What a rotten odor!” The Turtle said once more.
And so it went until the big bird finally lost his patience, turned quickly to the side, and tossed The Turtle down to earth.
God came down from heaven and tied the little pieces together.
You can see the patches in the shell.
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.
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