Coming Back to You, Pachamama

Notes

The poem by Quechua poet Raúl Cisneros is highly evocative and weaves through ideas of soil, Quechua cosmogony, and the relationship between a mother and her son. Cisneros comes from the peasant community of Pariamarca in Ayacucho, Peru, where he was a farmer, cattle herder, and baker, experiences that are infused in his work.

"Coming Back to You, Pachamama" is a poem that follows the narrator's reminiscence through a dream of a "neglected garden," "Mother Earth," and the human experience of flowers, plants, and aromas of the Peruvian landscape.

In Cisneros' poem, Pachamama is a revered goddess of the indigenous people of the Andes. She is an ever-present and independent deity who controls fertility and presides over planting and harvesting, a sign of renewal and renaissance.

To maintain a sense of place, voice, and geographical and linguistic specificity, we decided to keep some Quechua words in the poem, such as "tullpa" (a distinctive Peruvian hearth or stove), the aromatic flower fields of "qantus," or the "Inti sun," the sun God in Inca religion who was believed to be the ancestor of the Incas.

- Leo Boix