Elementary Motherland – To Cúcuta (Patria elemental – A Cúcuta)

The poems I will blog over the next few weeks were published in my father’s book Elementary motherland (Patria elemental), which he wrote for a vast minority. In each line, each word, he shares a little about his City. Nevertheless, each poem, written with plenty of feeling, will have no meaning to those who do not know about the history of Cúcuta. So I urge you to just sit back and enjoy as Dad recommends:

“If, when reading a word, a utterance, a verse,

the reader feels some sort of emotion inside,

without being able to relate this

to the object that inspired it,

unknown to him, the poem is doing its job.

After all, in each town there is a street,

a tragedy in its history, a thief, a hero, a saint

and many walls covered with memories.”

From my Dad’s book Elementary motherland (Patria elemental).

Elementary Motherland – To Cúcuta (Patria elemental – A Cúcuta)

The awful memory of the times of the Spanish Conquest

 is scattered with the breeze, through the rivers,

the stubbles, hills and valleys. And it climbs

to the mountain ranges, apparently inaccessible.

GUAIMARAL and ZULIA border the mountain

of heroism with threads of love and courage.

Beyond the lines of the horizon

CINERA lays decapitated.

It would be appropriate to mention in this poem,

in minor tones, Labatecas,

Motilones, Chinatos, Guanes, Cáchiras,

whose nameless commanders

fertilised the rebellious ground.

The memory of these brave and noble generations,

our ancestors, gets lost

between legend and history.

They lived the horror of their empires.

It would not be possible to reconstruct

the accuracy of their minutes

in expressions of time and space.

The tribe’s Chief CÚCUTA left the bequest  

of his family name to the people of the valley,

elementary motherland,

built among Cují trees of sparse shade,

on the banks of a poor and raucous river.