The More-Mother (La mamadre)
My more-mother comes by
in her wooden shoes. Last night
the wind blew from the pole, the roof tiles
broke, and walls
and bridges fell.
The pumas of night howled all night long,
and now, in the morning
of icy sun, she comes,
my more-mother, Dona
Trinidad Marverde,
soft as the tentative freshness
of the sun in storm country,
a frail lamp, self-effacing,
lighting up
to show others the way.
Dear more-mother—
I was never able
to say stepmother!—
at this moment
my mouth trembles to define you,
for hardly
had I begun to understand
than I saw goodness in poor dark clothes,
a practical sanctity—
goodness of water and flour,
that's what you were. Life made you into bread,
and there we fed on you,
long winter to forlorn winter
with raindrops leaking
inside the house,
and you,
ever present in your humility,
sifting
the bitter
grain-seed of poverty
as if you were engaged in
sharing out
a river of diamonds.
Oh, mother, how could I
not go on remembering you
in every living minute?
Impossible. I carry
your Marverde in my blood,
surname
of the shared bread,
of those gentle hands
which shaped from a flour sack
my childhood clothes,
of the one who cooked, ironed, washed,
planted, soothed fevers,
and when everything was done
and I at last was able
to stand on my own sure feet,
she went off, fulfilled, dark,
off in her small coffin
Where for once she was idle
under the hard rain of Temuco.
—Pablo Neruda, The More-Mother/ La mamadre, from Where the Rain Is Born/ Donde nace la lluvia from the collection Isla Negra translated by Alastair Reid, Rupa & Co. 2005