Tum Ab’aj

By HUMBERTO AK’ABAL

Translated by LOREN GOODMAN

In my town there’s a big rock
called Tum Ab’aj.

The sun and the moon take care of it.

It’s not a mute rock,
it’s a drum of stone.

It’s covered with a fluff
we refer to as toad shit.
A road, a river
and the rock in the middle.

Those who don’t know about it
Pass without noticing

Not the old ones;
they stop a while
burn incense for him, copal,
candles & honey.

When it rains, the stone sleeps;
tum, tum, tum, tum.

 

[Purchase Issue 12 here.]

Humberto Ak’abal, a Guatemalan poet of K’iché Maya ethnicity, concieves and writes his poems in the K’iché language and translates them himself into Spanish. Well known throughout Europe and South America, he is a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in France and has received a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Loren Goodman is the author of Famous Americans, selected by W. S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets; Suppository Writing; and New Products.

Tum Ab’aj

Related Posts

Mantra 5

KRIKOR BELEDIAN
from channel to channel / the lengthening beauty of shadows that float and bow down / and suck at the stones and planks / of the damp, bitter fog / of loneliness, / stone horses let loose their golden neighs / and the waters transform to / stained glass

Book cover of Concerning the Angels by Rafael Alberti

January 2025 Poetry Feature #2: Rafael Alberti in Translation

RAFAEL ALBERTI
Who are you, tell us, who do not remember you / from earth or from heaven? // Your shadow—tell us—is from what space? / What light, say it, has reached / into our realm? // Where do you come from, tell us, / shadow without words, / that we don’t remember you?

The Old Current Book Cover

January 2025 Poetry Feature #1: Brad Leithauser

BRAD LEITHAUSER
I’m twenty-seven, maybe too old to be / Upended by this, the manifold / Foreignness of it all, the fulfilling / Queer grandeur of it all, // But we each come into ourselves / As each can, in our own / Unmetered time (our own sweet way), / And for me this day’s more thrilling