The Time of Climate
2019; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 93; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.7588/worllitetoda.93.3.0070
ISSN1945-8134
Autores ResumoCOVER FEATURE CLIMATE CHANGE | POETRY The Time of Climate by Márcia Wayna Kambeba There was a time, a certain weather where the butterflies danced paused on the grass to rest and hear the song of the wind echo. There was a time, an ardent weather when the sun shone more strongly brightened the path with peace and goodness the fruit ripened and no one was harmed. There was a time, a wide weather, when the earth in her splendor nourished the world with happiness and love plants sprang up from her she had respect and value. There was a time, a brilliant weather when the moon would transform into Naiá and the sun would hide so this lady would shine in the shadowed night she would call the enchanted ones protectors of the forest, river, and sea. But man, son of the earth, who was shaped from her, enslaved to arrogance, money, a sin, dried up the river, slashed the earth, changed everything. He frightened the animals, deceived the enchanted ones, dragged out the grand samaúma tree and the birds, driven to despair, searched for a dwelling but saw only open country. The sun turned furious, burned the skin. The saddened moon hid in an eclipse. The water didn’t feel sorry for the one who’d forgotten her she stopped running and, blocked by a hydroelectric dam, quickly slowed and grew old. Human intelligence didn’t cease its attacks, and burning and razing the forest even affected the air breathing is a problem the smoke won’t stop. The weather, the climate was altered, my river changed course, my land that I’d cultivated dried up in summer I even lost my tobacco plants for purification the village saw no more fish – where is the pirabutão? The cassava wouldn’t lay down roots, my village became a dried-up sertão the spring I drank from was left a memory. I smell the odor of pollution poisoning the nation. To help the climate we need a certain time and weather only the ancient elder can control the machine of destruction. Translation from the Portuguese By Tiffany Higgins PHOTO: PIXABAY 70 WLT SUMMER 2019 Translator’s note: Naiá is an indigenous woman who fell in love with the moon. The pirabutão is a common name for the flat-whiskered catfish, or Pinirampus pirinampu, found in the Amazon, Essequibo, Orinoco, and Paraná basins. Though translators usually convert gendered pronouns in Romance languages into gender-neutral pronouns, I decided to retain them to reflect that Kambeba is describing an indigenous cosmology in which elements such as water and the moon are personified. Márcia Kambeba, of the Omágua/ Kambeba indigenous people in Brazil, is the author of Ay kakyri Tama – Eu moro na cidade (2013). She’s a writer, composer, poet, activist, photographer, performer, and public speaker on indigenous and Amazonian subjects. With a master’s degree in geography, she offers workshops and storytelling throughout Brazil and abroad. Tiffany Higgins is a poet, translator, and writer on the environment and Brazil. Her writing appears in Granta, Guernica, Poetry, and elsewhere. Visit worldlit.org to read more by Kambeba and Higgins on poetics, politics, and indigenous rights and to listen to a recording of this poem in Portuguese/Tupi. The Poetry of Climate Change in the Global South by Tiffany Higgins I N BRAZIL, INDIGENOUS WRITERS tend not to foreground the concept of global climate, or even the environment, as a separate category. Instead, they write about nature and culture as woven together, describing their spiritual vision of earth and ancestry (antithetical to nonindigenous extractivism) as well as indigenous rights—the protection of which is essential to the protection of their forest homelands. Brazilian indigenous writings don’t fit neatly into US/European formulations of climate and environment . I believe for this reason that they’re essential for broadening conceptions of possible solutions, which would include acting as allies for peoples on the most vulnerable edges of extraction and integrating urgent issues of cultural survival into any climate discussion . In a utilitarian perspective, Brazilian forests produce “environmental services” for the globe in the form of carbon sequestration. Brazilian...
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