Every family has one.
Even as a child, I'd hide
and cry, ay, ay, ay,
when people sneered
at my parents as if they were
below them in some hole
of quivering vermin.
Oye: Agua santa can come from our eyes.
Early the whispers begin,
persistent as the buzz
of litanies. Flickering tongues
say my mother X–tabai
and I, ay, ay, ay,
though beautiful as flaming
sunsets, are dangerous.
We start fires
in the heart,
and below the heart.
Nights we wander near
sighing rivers and streams,
our hair and voices rising.
Oye: Sing to confuse the gossips.
We hide, they say, in
evening's thickshadows,
convert ourselves into trees,
ceibas perhaps, disguise
our voices to sound like
wives, ay, ay, ay,
alter ourselves to lure innocence,
our hair and limbs tangling
round and round, like snakes
hugging men to death.
Oye: Know your own strength.
After the Spaniard comes,
rumor says I begin
having babies, ay, ay, ay,
conceptions, remember?
I nestle them here
when they finish nursing.
My mother X–tabai
strokes their round heads,
soft as a ball of feathers.
We whisper cuentos,
sing rru–rru lullabies.
Oye: Children are not bastards
though sometimes their fathers are.
They say I drown the babies,
bend down with them
heavy in my arms, rru–rru
release them and their gur–
glings into night water,
or do I, ay, ay, ay,
begin to like the feel
of a dagger, long and thin,
one day plunge the tongue
into those corazoncitos
to spare them
other piquetitos,
Maybe I grow the dagger
gleaming like my nails in the moonlight.
Oye: Be resourceful. Grow what you need.
Perhaps I want to hurt the father
who in his story
finds a woman who makes his parents smile,
fair like every princess,
probably thinner and ay, ay, ay,
silent too, and in those days,
I'm sure a virgin,
immaculate.
Oye: Encourage any man looking for a virgin
vessel to bear his own child.
The story is a watery
or bloody mess and says
I wander wailing
ay, ay, ay, near water,
por las orillas del río,
for the souls I've lost,
"Hijas mías" I call
like Malinche, mad woman,
madbad ghostwoman
roaming the dark.
Oye: Sometimes raising the voice does get attention.
Not all stabbings at the truth
are fatal, as women
will attest, you daughters of a long line
of celestial and earthly
women, knowers of serpent
rumors, altars, silence,
suppressed sighs.
Don't think I wail every night.
I'm a mother, not a martyr.
But try it. I wear a gown, white,
flowing for effect
and walk by water. Desert women
know about survival.
Join me sometime
for there's much to bewail,
everywhere frail, lost souls.
We'll cry, ay, ay, ay.
Oye: Never underestimate the power of the voice.
About the Author: Pat Mora's poems, characterized as "proudly bilingual" by The New York Times, have been collected in Aunt Carmen's Book of Practical Saints, Agua Santa/Holy Water, Borders, Chants, and other volumes. The Washington Post described her memoir, House of Houses, as "a textual feast . . .a regenerative act . . .and an eloquent bearer of the old truth that it is through the senses that we apprehend love." Her numerous, award–winning children's books include The Night the Moon Fell, Pablo's Tree, and This Big Sky. Mora was the University of Texas at El Paso's Distinguished Alumna for 2004, received a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship to write in Umbria, Italy in 2003, and has been a judge and recipient of the Poetry Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, advisor and recipient of the Kellogg National Leadership Fellowships, and Carruthers Chair in Honors, Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of New Mexico. A former consultant, museum director, university administrator and teacher at all levels, Mora is a popular national speaker shaped by the U.S.–Mexico border where she was born and spent much of her life. A native of El Paso, Texas, she now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. For more information, visit Pat Mora's website.
About the poem: "Llantos de La Llorina: Warnings from the Wailer" draws on themes and imagery from La Llorona folktales told throughout the American Southwest. More information on the legend can be found here.
Copyright © 1995 by Pat Mora, "Llantos de La Llorona:Warnings from the Wailer" first appeared in Agua Santa/Holy Water (Beacon Press, 1995). "Enchando Raices" copyright © 2005 by Lorena Montes. Neither may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the author and aritst.