Writing Scoop: Poetry by Gabriela Mistral

Gabriela Mistral  (Lucila Godoy Alcayaga 1889-1957) was a poet, diplomat and humanitarian from Chile.  In 1945 she became the first South American poet to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.  Mistral's poems are lyrical and intense with emotion.  Here is a poem the famous Harlem Renaissance Poet Langston Hughes translated to English from Mistral's native Spanish:

 COUNTRY THAT IS MISSING
Gabriela Mistral translated by Langston Hughes
Country that is missing,
strange country,
lighter than angel
and nebulous password,
color of dead algae,
color of mist,
ageless as time
lacking ageless bliss.

No pomegranates spring
or jasmines blow,
it has neither skies
nor seas of indigo.
Your name is a name
never heard called have I,
and in country with no name
I am going to die.

Neither bridge nor boat
brought me hither.
Nobody told me
it was island or shore.
I did not seek
or discover it either.

It seems like a fable now
that I've learned it,
dreaming to stay
and dreaming to fly.
But it is my country
where I live and I die.

I was born of things
that are no country:
of lands upon lands
I had and I lost;
of children I have watched die;
and things mine no longer
to which one I said my.

I lost mountain ranges
where once I slept;
orchards of gold I lost
sweet with life;
islands I lost
of cane and indigo,
and I watched their shadows
close in on me
and crowds and lovers
become country.

Manes of mist
with no napes and no backs
I watched the sleeping
winds make fly
and through errant years
turn into a country,
and in country with no name
I am going to die.