Gabriela Mistral
Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957)
Tiny Feet
A child’s tiny feet,
Blue, blue with cold,
How can they see and not protect you?
Oh, my God!
Tiny wounded feet,
Bruised all over by pebbles,
Abused by snow and soil!
Man, being blind, ignores
that where you step, you leave
A blossom of bright light,
that where you have placed
your bleeding little soles
a redolent tuberose grows.
Since, however, you walk
through the streets so straight,
you are courageous, without fault.
Child’s tiny feet,
Two suffering little gems,
How can the people pass, unseeing.
- Translated by Mary Gallwey1
Gabriela Mistral was born Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga in Vicuna, Chile 1889. By the time she was sixteen Gabriela worked as a teacher’s aide to support her mother. She had a successful career in education; many of her works deal with issues related to education and poetry. In 1945 Gabriel Mistral was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, making her the first female Latin American poet to do so. Her nobel citation read, “for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world”. Mistral died in 1957. Her words are inscribed upon the tomb: “What the soul is to the body, so is the artist to the people”.2
1Retrieved April 12, 2011 from Poet Seers web site: http://www.poetseers.org/nobel_prize_for_literature/gab/gabp/1/
2Retrieved April 12, 2011 from Poet Seers web site: http://www.poetseers.org/nobel_prize_for_literature/gab/
Photo from http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/gabriela_mistral/photo
