Eleanor Reyes

Kuak nikneke ninokuikatis

Uetse tonajle niman noche najmanchiua.
Xnemej totomej, xnotlaloua ajakatsintle
nin kana patlanej xijtsitsintin ipan in chikaualistle.

Noyakajtsol ken se tlakachiche
nechilia maninokuikate
niman ninokuikatsia pampa maka nelkauas in tonajle.
Kema noyolika nikake nokualis
niman tlaka nokuikaluan
kinekej tenakastlaposkej,
teixtlaposkej
niman kinekej kinpajtiskej noche tlakamej
uan melauak kintlauelmiktsia kalmaseualtin.

Maske tej, tlaka on kauitl melauak pitelotsin
niman on tepantlakamej
xkauiliaj maueiya nokuikaltsin,
xkauiliaj manokuepa se xijtlapajtiketl
kampa kijtoua tla kauiliaj,
melauak miyak ualixuas ken ixua xijtle
niman kuajkon miyak tokniuan kinmakixtis,
kuajkon tej, oksejpa san ompa ninokaua,
kan niknektok ninokuikatis
niman xaka nechakake.

–Martín [Jacinto Meza] Tonalmeyotl

When singing to myself

Sun falls down on us all and then we all do our last task,

Birds are not walking, don’t run dear, since the wind is not running

Small leaves gather in strength, then stop flying;

My nose like a man-dog’s

Telling me to sniff out a song–

Then I sing to myself at the end of the day

When I hear with my heart what I wrote

My song,

Wants to open someone's ears,

Someone’s eyes open,

Try to heal all men

Who are impatient in life

But time is too short here

Then walls made of humans

They don't stay long enough for my song to mature

Don’t let my song become an herbal doctor, an outsider–

When something starts to grow

Like a weed across the whole earth

Then my brother can heal,

In that case here I dwell

Where I am wanting to sing to myself

There you can hear me

–Translated from Nahuatl by Eleanor Reyes

Singing to myself

Sun rays fall on us and then everyone becomes busy,

Birds are not flying, don’t run dear for the wind is not running

The small leaves have stopped flying;

My nose like a man-dog

Telling me to sing

Then I sing.

When I hear with my heart what I write

Then my song–

Somebody's ears open

Somebody's eyes open

Then we heal all men.

But time is truly short,

Walls made by humans

Don’t stay long enough so that my song can mature

Don’t let my song be a healing herb

When they say something it grows

Into a weed across the earth

Then in that case my brothers can heal;

Only there I dwell

Where I want to sing

Hear me there.

–Translated from Nahuatl by Eleanor Reyes

Cultura y lenguaje

(An erasure of my interview with Jaime Reyes)

En honduras–

en Olancho

se hablaba chorotega y chortis–

Creo que ya no hay mucha connection por que lo perdimos

La forma de los celebrations–

la forma de cocinar–

Reemplazamos los comidas de antes con burgers & fries–

lo que cocinamos antes–

cuando yo fui pequeño

te sentabas con tu tia o tio cuando se fue la luz

te contaron historias pero–

Nuestro tribus está perdido

Se perdio rapido–

En gracias lempira hablan lenca-

En ocotepeque y copán hablan maya-

Solo quedó el espanol

perdimos un momento grande

cultura y lenguaje–

–Eleanor Reyes

Translator’s Statement

Martín [Jacinto Meza] Tonalmeyotl was born 1983 and currently teaches as a Professor of Nahuatl language at the Intercultural University of the State of Puebla. Tonalmeyotl won the national short story contest Lizard Wings in 2021 as well as the fellowship of the National System of Art Creators in 2022, participating in the category of Letters in Indigenous Languages. Tonalmeyotl is also a part of the editorial board New York poetry review and oversees publications in Indigenous languages (“Lit & Luz Festiva”).

“Kuak nikneke ninokuikatis” was taken from Tonalmeyotl’s debut poetry collection Tlakatsajtsilistle, which was published in 2016. These poems are all written in Nahuatl. This poem is 22 lines long and is separated into three stanzas. The first is three lines long, the second is nine lines long, and the last is ten lines long. When just looking at the poem nothing really stands out to you, in terms of the layout. A few of the lines have commas either at the end or in the middle of the sentence but only four lines end with a period. The wording in the poem might not appear distinctive to a Nahuatl speaker since in Nahuatl everything is said very vividly and the speaker is always trying to paint a picture, usually with metaphors or examples. However, being an English speaker and hearing this poem for the first time I was stricken by the amount of metaphors and illustrative wording. But having multiple metaphors in the poem made it a lot harder to understand because most of the lines probably mean something specific in Nahuatl, but are idioms or metaphors in Nahuatl that don’t translate over to English very well. For example, two of the lines in my poem are “My nose like a man dog” and “Then respectful wall people” when literally translated to English. However when it gets to imagery things change. As I previously said, Nahua culture is very vivid in their words and the pictures they paint with them. Knowing this already from my mentor I was very excited to hear how the poem illustrated the poet's intentions. I was pleasantly surprised when I was told that the whole poem focused on the imagery and surroundings of the speaker. In every line something about nature or the speaker's surroundings appeared. When it came to trying to figure out the theme and topic, me and my mentor were lost. Neither of us were certain that we would be able to figure out the poem well and had to say our best guesses which ended up being that the topic of the poem was a melody and the theme was the singer wanting everything to be quiet so that they could sing.

However, there are so many different dialects across the Nahuatl language that you could be in a neighboring state that speaks a different dialect and not know what they are saying because the neighboring state doesn't have the letter “x” in their alphabet. Tonalmeyotl uses the Guerrero dialect in his writings. Most of the poems that Tonalmeyotl writes address colonization, narcoterrorism, and climate change (Tonalmeyotl). When meeting with my language mentor, we discussed how Nahua poetry is usually made. Looking through the poem, you aren’t able to identify anything that specifically stands out, even if you don’t know the language. My mentor helped me understand that most Nahua poems usually don’t have any sort of rhyme scheme or a specific/distinct shape to them. While there probably was some sort of thought going into the making of this poem on Tonalmeyotl’s part, me and my mentor weren’t able to figure anything special out. One of the interesting things that my mentor told me about Nahua culture and the Nahuatl language was that it is very metaphorical and descriptive. For example, she doesn’t know what the word for “silent” is because they don’t use that word. They would rather give examples of silence than say that something is silent or even quiet. Another interesting thing that we found was the use of body parts in this poem. Evelyn Fischer, my language mentor, said the Nahua culture uses body parts to insinuate or ask things. For example, instead of saying “what's up” you can say “what does your heart say” in Nahuatl.

When having to create my own translation I was very uncertain about how well I would be able to convey the meaning of the poem. Having already met with my mentor and being able to hear about how beautiful and descriptive Nahua poems were, I was excited to give it my best shot. Through my translating process I tried to stick to the literal meaning of the original poem as best I could. But, the translation didn’t feel as beautiful as my mentor had described. When translating I strived my best to give my reader an opportunity to look at my poem in a lens that made them appreciate the Nahua culture but in English. However my translation felt like it couldn’t describe everything that Tonalmeyotl was able to say in Nahuatl. This brought me back to one of the readings that we did in our mini unit on translations. In one of the readings we did Lorna Gibb wrote: “Beyond the emotional and cultural loss, there are also cognitive and environmental implications of language extinction. Indigenous languages often contain highly specialized vocabularies for landscapes, plants, and ecological systems, knowledge that can be invaluable for conservation efforts.” This quote had struck me during the reading as something that was probably true. But I had never experienced it so I wasn’t quite sure what to fully expect. But when translating the poem I was able to see what Gibbs meant. The translated words just wouldn’t flow well or have the same meaning in English. When read aloud in Nahuatl this poem sounded more like a song, although it didn’t have a particular rhyming scheme or syllable count. But when I translated it to English it lost that rhythm. As I have previously stated, the language Nahuatl is very beautiful and depicts scenes whenever you talk. In Nahuatl I’m sure there are words that specify a sort of plant or ecosystem that can’t be carried over to English. Or when it is it sounds like a metaphor more than anything else. Keeping that in mind I pushed forward and tried to do my best in my interpretive translations.

My language mentor mentioned that the speaker of the poem was probably in nature and was taking inspiration from it, so I too took inspiration from nature and made it the main focus of my first translation poem. I tried my best to incorporate nature and make it the sole inspiration for the first poem. It did prove difficult and I got a lot of feedback from my peers about how to make it better. But in the end I was able to create a poem I was really proud of. Most of the changes for the first poem surrounded grammar and the flow of the poem. In the literal translation it was very choppy and hard to follow the poem's meaning. Some of the changes I made were:

“Sun falls and then everyone does the last thing that they do

Birds are not walking/living, don’t run dear/respectful wind is not running

This here that flies small leaves in the strength”

This is the first stanza of my poem which is the one I changed the most to set the tone of the poem. This is what I changed it to:

“Sun falls down on us all and then we all do our last task,

Birds are not walking, don’t run dear, since the wind is not running

Small leaves gather in strength, then stop flying;”

Here you can see I didn’t change too much of the literal translation but I did make it a lot easier to follow. The challenging part was incorporating nature into the rest of the poem. The literal translation strayed from nature further in the poem and I didn’t want to add anything new to the poem because I thought that it would change it too much. My second translation poem, which was honestly my favorite, focused on the fact that in Nahua culture you don’t say something is “silent”, you demonstrate that. Some of my favorite lines demonstrating this are:

“Sun rays fall on us and then everyone becomes busy

Birds are not flying, don’t run dear for the wind is not running

The small leaves have stopped flying”

This is the first stanza of my translation poem and already it has set the tone that everything around the speaker is silent. The original or literal version of this was:

“Sun falls and then everyone does the last thing that they do

Birds are not walking/living, don’t run dear/respectful wind is not running

This here that flies small leaves in the strength”

My main goal was to make the flow of this stanza much better. The literal translation already did a good job of demonstrating the silence. All I had to do was rearrange things so that it actually made sense. In my version I make the lines sound more grammatically correct and also get rid of some of the last line. I didn’t really understand what Tonalmeyotl was trying to describe by saying “This here that flies small leaves in the strength” so I cut most of it, at least in this translation, and rearranged it to say “The small leaves have stopped flying”. Not only does this make more sense but I feel like it helps demonstrate the silent environment around the speaker much better. Other than trying to showcase the beautiful wording of this poem I had two major challenges; my mentor lives in Vienna. We had a lot of trouble organizing a meeting and she ended up sending me a recording of her translating the poem, which I was very thankful for. The second challenge was that my mentor didn’t speak the Guerrero dialect of Nahuatl; she spoke Nahuatl from Tepozteco. When it came down to the translating both of us were slightly lost, for different reasons. I was lost because I didn’t speak any Nahuatl and just had to trust Evelyn to tell me everything about the poem. Evelyn was lost because some of the words in my poem she had never seen before or there would be slight letter changes that would throw everything off.

“Sun falls and then everyone does the last thing that they do

Birds are not walking/living, don’t run dear/respectful wind is not running

This here that flies small leaves in the strength”

This is the first stanza of my poem which is the one I changed the most to set the tone of the poem. This is what I changed it to:

“Sun falls down on us all and then we all do our last task,

Birds are not walking, don’t run dear, since the wind is not running

Small leaves gather in strength, then stop flying;”

“Sun rays fall on us and then everyone becomes busy

Birds are not flying, don’t run dear for the wind is not running

The small leaves have stopped flying”

This is the first stanza of my translation poem and already it has set the tone that everything around the speaker is silent. The original or literal version of this was:

“Sun falls and then everyone does the last thing that they do

Birds are not walking/living, don’t run dear/respectful wind is not running

This here that flies small leaves in the strength”

Going into this project my beliefs about what makes a “good” translation weren’t very clear. I simply believed that you had to get the point across. But you could honestly do whatever as long as you stuck relatively close to the original. By doing this project I was able to figure out what I truly believe makes a “good” translation. I believe that you should try to showcase specific features from the language you're translating going back to the example about silence in Nahua culture and the way you don’t say something is “silent”. Keeping that viewpoint of the language is important because without it you lose the perspective the language had in the world. As Gibbs says: “Losing a language isn’t just about losing words; it’s about losing a way of seeing the world.” She states this beautifully and also helps show how I feel about translation.

When interviewing my father I knew that there were going to be questions that neither of us knew the answer to. However the scale on which neither of us knew our history was astounding. I was left with more questions than when I started the interview. Being able to hear from his perspective how much of our heritage we lost was an experience I’ll never forget. I tried to create a poem that encapsulated those feelings. My poem is all in Spanish since my interview was also in Spanish.

For my poem I separated thoughts and things my dad said but tried to make it flow. After every em-dash I would indent the next line to make it like a continuing thought, something that we were talking about but then got interrupted and then came back to the original idea. If the thought/lines went out farther than one indented line I would bring back the lines to the left hand margin. The poem symbolizes the thoughts of the language being lost slowly. My dad said that the language and heritage was lost very quickly but if I had to change it with the same outcome I would’ve made us lose the language and culture slower. Specifically I wish I had maintained part of their ways of life or even just being told stories about them. Without it I feel as if a part of my cultural identity is missing. Although we didn't learn much about why our heritage languages were lost so quickly I can make a pretty certain guess that colonialism had a big impact on this. Nahuatl and Lenca became the main languages spoken in and around Honduras meanwhile smaller languages like Chorotis, Taino, and Chorotega were lost. From this experience, I took away how much of my heritage I don’t know about but wish I did.

Works Cited

Gibb, Lorna. “Why Linguistic Diversity Matters.” Princeton University Press, 29 April 2025, https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/why-linguistic-diversity-matters.

Latin America Literature Today. “Martín Tonalmeyotl.” Latin America Literature Today, https://latinamericanliteraturetoday.org/lal_author/martin-tonalmeyotl/.

Lit & Luz Festival: of Language, Literature, and Art. “Martín Tonalmeyotl.” Lit & Luz Festival, https://www.litluz.org/participants/martin-tonalmeyotl-2021.

Tonalmeyotl, Martín. “Three Náhuatl Poems from Mexico.” World Literature Today, 18 November 2020, https://worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/poetry/three-nahuatl-poems-mexico-martin-tonalmeyotl.