The Untranslatable: Yuputka

By Thomas Page

This is a series of poems of words that do not directly translate into English. I have tried to capture the essence of the word in a poem.

 

Walking barefoot in a glen ruled by the moon

When the equinox is closer than the solstice was far

The ground is alive with a world smaller than our thoughts

Welcoming every monster and deviled-eye

Shining like a beacon in a fabled tale

Of curses and heartbreaks swamped in apprehension

That the darkness is a fiend with teeth all the down

From its head to the end of its coat

Of a thousand meat-wet bones affixed like fetishes

Warding off the light in your lights

Eclipsing the moon with shadows dancing the macabre

Rhythms drenched in cold sweats and the hoots of the night predator

Swooping to make your head an owlet’s nest—

An incubator of the living and the dead,

The crib of the soul-crushing Martian body and its twin rotating around the red dot

Lost in the cloudy sky bearded with gnarled branches

Like the wayward sailor devouring the albatross

Mixed with the stench of the remaining flesh on the stake

Or the blood under the crust of the crushing rocks

Miles away from the stagnate lifeboat with the souls evaporated

Into the purple sky wavering with the tides to make the clouds

Over your head now as the moon retreats into the bush

And the sun does not dare to tread on the things

Waiting for you in the glen of the night.

 

Language: Ulwa