Dung Beetle

A poem, written by Natalia Toledo, translated…

First…

They’d shaped up the dung

Round like the full moon

They’d carried it over their heads

Like vendors who sold foods on the streets

They are finding the bottommost layer of the world

To store and hide those stuff

As if they’re keeping the dung as

A sacred heirloom

Second…

The fires are made from the land layers of the world

A soft leaf fell asleep in my eyes

My shadows are on a march

Trying to appease to my needle-filled exterior, trembling

I’d found a home in a garden

I’d carried a fly on my back, which made me into half-invisible

I have a palm made of leaves

And, everything salute itself to me

And I’d returned that favor with my rancid scent

Third…

I sat, underneath a shadow

My back is a leaf of corn, tilted downward

Sadness, it’d opened up the land

Like when it was tilled for the purpose of planting

The dust of the world

Ground, in my eyes slowly

The aroma given off by the raindrops

Stayed on the edge of the skies, waiting to fall

Fourth…

The world is darkened

The mud overflowed everywhere, rushed toward the oceans

The bluish green sun came, and it’d wiped the men’s eyes

The land absorbed its moisture from the flowers and the plants

A shake, from its crevasse

Born, the very first man

It says here, that these four poems have a special kind of taste of nature.  From the dung beetles, she’d reflected the roles of women in her era, like how the poet carries that natives’ mindset, observing the small insect, and how it’d made her feel.

So, this, is how it goes, from the origins of man, to how we are like the dung beetles, working hard all our lives, and what for?  Are our lives more purposeful than those dung beetles, after all, they ARE, lower order of animals, and, all they care about, are their survivals from day to day, and this, is a metaphor for man (human, that is!!!), after all, we all struggle in our daily living, making ends meet, run around the world like headless chickens, and we just don’t realize, how much we are actually like those lower order of species!